Jon Jost in conversation with Peter Snowdon and Katia Rossini
In 2001, shortly after I first arrived in Brussels, my friend Jonathan Murphy invited me to interview the American filmmaker Jon Jost for the now-defunct English-language magazine, The Bulletin, where he was arts editor. The result was the beginning of both a long collaboration with The Bulletin, and a long friendship with Jon, whom I came to consider as, in many ways, my cinematographic mentor.
Jon was in town for a series of retrospective screenings at the Cinema Nova, contrasting his older work on celluloid with his newest adventures in “digital cinema”. The latter works, especially the more abstract ones, affected me deeply. After finishing the short piece that appeared in print, I found myself not only with a long recorded interview that touched on many subjects that fascinated me, but which would have left a broader, non-cinephile audience cold, but also with a “bootleg” registration of the fascinating - and sometimes fractious - public conversation that had taken place on evening in the basement bar of the Nova between Jon and the programmer Katia Rossini. When I learned that Jon was going to produce and exhibit the multi-screen installation Trinity at ZKM in Karlsruhe the following year, I proposed providing an edited version of our conversations to accompany the event.
Recorded at the Cinema Nove and the Hotel Van Belle, Brussels, on 28 and 29 April 2001.
Produced by Peter Snowdon for the Necessary Press.
Presented by ZKM, Karlsruhe, to accompany Jost’s installation Trinity, 28 October - 3 November 2002.
First broadcast on KMSU-FM and KMSK-FM on 27 December, 2002.
Running time: 63’04”.
Thanks to Jon Jost, Katia Rossini, Hippolyte Waldman, Jonathan Murphy, Margaret Rosen, David R. Israel, OtherShore, Craig Groe and John Sherwood.