Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man

On Thursday I called into St. Anne’s Church on Crofts Street (a rather colourful street, as you can see below) to see a screening of Jonas Mekas’s Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man. 

Settling down in front of the projector, the knowledgeable Bob Gelsthorpe explained more about the film and its context within the creator’s career. Jonas Mekas is a Lithuanian filmmaker who was imprisoned in a labour camp near Hamburg, before emigraing to Brooklyn in the 1940s. Just two weeks after his arrival he bought a Bolex 16mm camera with borrowed money. In 1954 he started a magazine called Film Culture with his brother and by the early 60s he had set up the early version of the Anthology Film Archives, which, to this day, is one of the biggest and best centres for the preservation and exhibition of avant-garde film. He was friends with people like Lennon and Dalí and Ginsberg but remained relatively unknown and underground.

He also found time to make over 50 films. Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man, is formed of footage found on the cutting room floor from his other films. The Super 16 clips flicker and jump and bleed into one another, resulting in just over an hour of what looks like a strange, conceptual home video. Snowy streets and sunny gardens are placed side-by-side without an obvious narrative, making no sense to anyone beyond Mekas and perhaps his immediate associates.

The film is narrated by Mekas himself in a quiet, repetitive style, a talking-out-loud-to-yourself sort of rambling where he seems to be exploring different ways of communicating what he means, repeating sentences and words in the hope of finding the magical combination. This, coupled with a gentle, slightly melancholic soundtrack, draw the viewer in to his world of nostalgia and you find yourself creating narratives out of the various snippets. 

Scattered throughout are pieces of Mekas’ poetry (yes, he’s a poet too. Bob described him, half-seriously, as the Lithuanian Billy Childish). This too enhances the viewer’s perceptions, forcing them to look further than the grainy footage and to think about Life and Death in all of their capitalised glory. The central emotions are simple joy and the same awesome sadness that you experience looking at the stars in the night sky, knowing full well some might not exist any more. The title might be considered ironic (Labour camps and emigration can’t have been the easiest things to deal with) but after watching the film it is very difficult to doubt Mekas’ s sincerity. No matter how much pain and loss there was in his life, there were also enough small happy details. Even aside from his prolific film career and his legacy in avant-garde cinema he was, and is, a happy man.


“I did it,” Mekas says. “I managed to capture it. Some of the beauty, some of the happiness.” 

For more cinematic action then head to The Globe at 6pm on Monday for a screening of The Iron Giant.