Online Materials

Self Portrait (1980)

A Walk (1990)

Peter Kubelka at the Library of Congress (1993)

Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (April 1997)

Laboratorium Anthology (1999)

Requiem for a Manual Typewriter (2000)

Letter from Greenpoint (2004)

Notes on Utopia (2005)

I Leave Chelsea Hotel (2009)


In this section I am unloading my finished films and videos that may be found in some other dissemination venues; but also finished and unfinished materials that aren't available anywhere else and which I want to share with my friends. It will develop and take its own course, like brooks and rivers and avalanches do...

Self Portrait
1980, 20 min.

A Walk
1990, 58 min.

Filmed on Dec. 15, 1990. On a rainy day, I have a walk through the early Soho. I begin my walk on 80 Wooster Street and continue towards the Williamsburg bridge, where, 58 minutes later, still raining, my walk ends. As I walk, occasionally I talk about what I see or I tell some totally unrelated little stories that come to my mind as I walk.

This video was my early exercise in the one-shot video form. There are no cuts in this video.

Peter Kubelka at the Library of Congress
1993, 111 min.

An historic event: Peter Kubelka gives a lecture at the Library of Congress.

Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (April 1997)
1997, 67 min.

This is a video record of the Buddhist Wake ceremony at Allen Ginsberg's apartment. You see Allen, now asleep forever, in his bed; some of his close friends; and the wrapping up and removal of Allen's body from the apartment. You hear Jonas' description of his last conversation with Allen, three days earlier. You see the final farewell at the Buddhist temple, 118 West 22nd Street, New York City, and some of his close friends: Patti Smith, Gregory Corso, LeRoy Jones-Baraka, Hiro Yamagata, Anne Waldman, and many others.

Laboratorium Anthology
1999, 63 min.

Scenes from the life and work at Anthology Film Archives. Much of the footage in this video was shot by Auguste Varkalis.

Requiem for a Manual Typewriter
2000, 19 min.

Taped on February 16, 2000, at the Poetry Project reading. All about me struggling to type on a roll of computer paper. It's my tribute to, and celebration of the manual typewriter, the ecstasy of typing on my Olympia Deluxe.

Letter from Greenpoint
2004, 80 min.

In February 2004, after 30 years of my life in Soho, I made a decision to leave Soho and move to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This video is about what it feels like to leave a place in which I've spent more time than any other place, and which was also a place of my family life, I am somewhere else now. It's also about beginning of letting roots grow in a new place, new home, with new friends, new thoughts, experiences.

Notes on Utopia
2005, 55 min.

Four-part video made in 2003 and 2004. The first two parts were presented at the Venice Biennale of 2003 as part of the Utopia Station project. An open-ended video -- more parts may be added to it in the future -- my thoughts on the idea of utopia. My thoughts on it change as time goes, as I am trying to figure it out for myself, the meaning of it, the practice of it, the possibility of it, in the past, today and in the future.

I Leave Chelsea Hotel
2009, 4 min.

Filmed in 1967 (camera: Gideon Bachmann), edited in 2009. I exit Chelsea Hotel and proceed towards Seventh Avenue where I catch a taxi. From 1967 to 1974, Chelsea Hotel, Room 725, was my home. Soundtrack: Leonard sings a song to my neighbor in room 726, Janis Joplin.