was.
And John Cage. From him I learned that chance is one of the great editors. You shoot something one day, forget it, shoot something the next day and forget the details of that. . . . When you finally string it all together, you discover all sorts of connections. I thought at first that I should do more editing and not rely on chance. But I came to realize that, of course, there is no chance: whenever you film, you make certain decisions, even when you don't know that you do. The most essential, the most important editing takes place during the shooting as a result of these decisions.
Before 1960 I tried to edit the material from 1949 to 1955. But I practically destroyed it by tampering with it too much. Later, in 1960 or 1961, I spent a long time putting it
to the way it was originally. After that I was afraid to touch it, and I didn't touch it until 1975.
It's in the fifth reel of
that you seem, for the first time, to be back in touch with rural life and with the land.
Yes, that's where the 'lost lost lost' ends. I'm beginning to feel at home again. By reel six one cannot say that I feel lost anymore; paradise has been regained through cinema.
It's the paradise of having a place where you can work and struggle for something that you care about?
When you enter a whole world where you feel at home. A world for which you care. Or, a world which takes you over, possesses you, obsesses you, and pushes all the other worlds into the shadow. Still, I don't think that I'll ever be able, really and completely, to detach myself from what I really am, somewhere very deep: a Lithuanian.
Reel five is exhilarating in its use of light and texture. And you take some chances by allowing yourself to be very vulnerable: you allow yourself to look foolish.
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I realized I was taking chances. I have to give credit here againone is always taking lessonsto Gregory Markopoulos. Gregory had taken chances that I thought wouldn't work, but he always managed to pull through. I don't know how familiar you are with Markopoulos's work; it's practically impossible to see these dayshe doesn't show it in America. I learned from Gregory that what seems embarrassingly personal soon after a film is made, later comes to be part of the content, and not embarrassing at all.
Another lesson came from Dostoyevsky, from a statement of his that I read when I was fifteen or sixteen and which I have never forgotten. A young writer complained to Dostoyevsky that his own writing was too subjective, too personal, and that he would give anything to learn to write more objectively. Dostoyevsky repliedthis is my memory; I may have adapted it totally to my own purpose; it's not a quotation'The main problem of the writer is not how to escape subjectivity, but rather how to be subjective, how really to write from one's self, to be oneself in language, form, and content. I challenge you to be subjective!' It is very difficult to be openly subjective. One has to keep it within formal limits, of course; one must not wallow in subjectivity. Perhaps I come very close to that sometimes. . . .
Did the fact that 1976 was the American Bicentennial year have any impact on the making of
It does tell a quintessentially American story.
was completed because the New York State Council on the Arts (maybe because of the Bicentennial) decided to give four very special twenty-thousand-dollar grants. Harry Smith got one too. Suddenly I had enough money and I said, 'This is my chance.'
It's amazing, when one thinks about it: everybody saysand it's quite truethat this country is made of immigrants, that America is a melting pot. But it's not reflected very often in American literature. There is no major work that really documents the immigrant experience. Sinclair's
is the closest we have that I know of.
is a record of certain immigrant realities that have been largely ignored in art.
[1961] is probably the closest of your films to a recognizably commercial narrative. What was the background of that project?
First I wrote a sketchy, poetic script that consisted of thirty sequences. I wanted to improvise around those sketches, and that's what we set out to do. 'We' means Adolfas and me. We had agreed to assist each other on our own productions: first I'd make a film, and he'd help; next he'd make a film, and I'd help. He helped me on
and I helped him on
[1963]. The only thing that went wrong, and
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really very badly wrong was that at that time we had a friend, Edouard de Laurot, who wanted very much to be involved in the film as well. From solidarity and friendship, we decided to invite him to work with us. He was a brilliant person, but very self-centered and very dictatorial. Edouard's position was that absolutely every movement, every word, every thing that appeared in the film should be totally controlled and politically meaningful. I tended, even at that time, to be much more open; I was interested in improvisation, chance, accidents. I was too inexperienced and unsure of myself to push through with my own shy vision. So often I did things Edouard's way. It
