To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas & the New York Underground

James, a professor of film studies at USC, aims in this collection to celebrate Mekas on his 70th birthday. A key figure in the New York film avant-garde, Mekas was an early film columnist for the Village Voice and founder of the influential magazine Film Culture , the Film-Makers Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives. The volume alternates scholarly essays on his films and aspects of writing as a critic, poet and diarist with reminiscences from his friends and colleagues. These range from critic Andrew Sarris, who expresses admiration for Mekas as a person while rejecting his avant-garde film aesthetic, to filmmakers George Kuchar, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage and Robert Breer. The scholarly essays include the insightful--Majorie Keller writes on Mekas as a ``mother'' figure and likens his films to writings of women diarists; Paul Arthur discusses Mekas as a representative of the '60s social and political counterculture--and the occasionally obscure. However, this collection is a valuable addition to the much-too-short shelf on American avant-garde cinema. (June)