Peter Sempel, known for Dandy and Just Visiting This Planet (shown at the 13th and 15th Mostra Film Festival respectively), has chosen underground director, poet, and intellectual Jonas Mekas for subject of his most recent documentary Jonas in the Desert.
In fact, Mekas had already taken part in Just Visiting This Planet singing a gipsy aria. Like Sempel’s former work, Jonas in the Desert is not a documentary in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it is a journey through the world of the artist – one of the exponents of independent U.S. movies; founder and director of the New York Anthology Film Archive – and captures his ideas, his creativity, and art.
In this way, he shows much of Mekas’ personality and of his creative universe. Sempel brings together image and music, phrases and conversation, statements by many of the cultural icons such as Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Kenneth Anger, Allen Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, Al Pacino, Martin Scorcese, among others, and passages from Mekas’ films. Sempel’s style echoes throughout the work of the artist itself; nevertheless, it acts more as a complement than a mere tribute. The result is a precise expression of the essence of Jonas Mekas.
