Favorite quote from Jonas Mekas about the film CHRISTMAS ON EARTH
(1963, Barbara Rubin) :
“CHRISTMAS ON EARTH: A woman; a man; the black of the pubic hair;
the cunt’s moon mountains and canyons. As the film goes, image after image, the
most private territories of the body are laid open for us. The first shock
changes into silence then is transposed into amazement. We have seldom seen
such down-to-body beauty, so real as only beauty (man) can be: terrible beauty
that man, that woman is, are, that Love is.
Do they have no more shame? This eighteen-year-old girl, she must
have no shame, to look at and show the body so nakedly. Only angels have no
shame. But we do not believe in angels; we do not believe in Paradise any more,
nor in Christmas; we have been Out for too long. “Orpheus has been too long in Hell.”—Brakhage.
A sylllogism: Barbara Rubin has no shame; angels have no shame;
Barbara Rubin is an angel.
Yes, Barbara Rubin has no shame because she has been kissed by the
angel of Love.
The motion picture camera has been kiseed by the angel of Love.
From now on, camera shall know no shame.
Cinema has discovered all of man: As painting and sculpture did
from the very beginning. But then: Cinema IS in its very beginning.”
AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY
(2000, Jonas Mekas, 320min) will be screened at Thammasat University Library,
Ta Prachan Campus, on Sunday, February 16, at 1230hrs.
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