Pioneer avant-garde filmmaker, poet and artist Jonas Mekas (born 1922) was the barometer of the New York art scene in the 1960s and ‘70s. His interviews with Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Susan Sontag, John Cassavetes, Carolee Schneemann, Yvonne Rainer, Claes Oldenburg, Kenneth Anger and Michael Snow, among many other avant-garde artists and filmmakers for his weekly column in the Village Voice between 1958 and 1977, are gathered here for the first time in this substantial publication.

«Me gustan las cosas que están fuera de control. En cierto punto, el artista se pondrá firme, detendrá al medio y lo domesticará, utilizándolo para cultivar los campos de su propia imaginación. Pero, por el momento, el toro corre a su antojo. (…) Las corrientes que avanzan entre nosotros y que los artistas externalizan han madurado, contienen múltiples impulsos y brotan efusivamente, de forma incontrolable y hasta ahora desconocida. Hasta los artistas de vanguardia, sentados junto al público, se sorprenden y repiten: “¿Qué demonios está pasando?”.»

Jonas Mekas has worked together with Andy Warhol, George Maciunas, John Lennon, and many others. In New York he was an influential figure in the New American Cinema, although he came to film-making relatively late. In 1944 Mekas and his younger brother Adolfas had to flee from the Nazis for copying leaflets. They were interned for eight months in a labour camp in Elmshorn.