Good Vibrations: Interview with MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS Filmmaker

AFS Doc Days guest programmer Todd Savage talked to MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS director Jake Meginsky in anticipation of the film’s opening this weekend at AFS Cinema.

15 years ago, drummer Jake Meginsky showed up at the front door of the renowned free-jazz percussionist Milford Graves’ home and asked to be taken on as a student. Graves invited him in to play, and thus began an ongoing mentorship that forms the foundation of Meginsky’s intimate and immersive portrait, MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS.

The documentary is an extended meditation on Graves and his music though a series of lessons on sound and vibration, healing, creative expression, and the artistic life. Director Jake Meginsky talks about what drew him to the Professor and his approach to capturing and sharing the energy of Graves through cinema.

How did the film develop?

The film kind of chose me. The earliest scenes I recorded that made it into the film were in the first six months of meeting the Professor. I could sense immediately that I was around someone who had a really dynamic and complex way of thinking about the world. All the stories and lessons in the film are ones that I received pretty early, but also heard in different ways over the years.

He showed me an archival reel of him performing for the school for children with autism. This film was about 16 minutes total, and we watched that in his basement on a super hot day. The experience of cinema in that—the colors, the way he demonstrated so clearly his particular vision of music as a healing force in the universe, through his interaction with the children—was so powerful visually and sonically and at that point I was kind of like, “Whoa!”

There’s something about the way that footage so clearly captures the transmission of energy, which I think cinema does so well. In that sense, it‘s activating so many senses at once, and it has the chance to transmit energy, not unlike what a musical performance can do.

The rest of the archival footage in the film came from him giving me other pieces, so nothing in the film is done in a traditional way. Everything in the film—the footage of the Professor in the bamboo garden in Japan, the footage where everyone is drinking sake at the farm, the footage from the dojo, the black and white photography—those are all things he’d kind of ask me to come to the basement and see. It was an organic process and it definitely was something that emerged out of a labor of love.

Would you ever put the camera down near him? Or was he too likely to say or do something interesting?

Yes, he’s super dynamic, so it would be that situation where you would put the camera down and he would drop some sort of amazing knowledge. There are hundreds of hours of footage. Learning what this film wanted to be was an emerging process; it wasn’t something that was necessarily devised from a composition, but came through more improvising and learning how the film wanted to structure itself. 

The opening shots sets up the documentary’s visual approach. How did you find a style that connected to Milford’s music and work as an artist?

It was all a process of discovery, but the filmmakers I really love that deal with music and sensation, people like Les Blank, kind of learn to dance with the subject.

The language of the film had to be in tune with the Professor’s vibe. At the time of that initial shot, which the cinematographer took, we were staying up all night and shooting with the idea of thoughtfully shooting all of the iconography in his backyard dojo: masks from all over the world, medical models, books and mirrors, and other kinds of equipment. All of a sudden you could see that that shot had the whole film in it. It had the sense of slowly dropping into a really intimate space.

He let us into a space that many artists aren’t comfortable sharing. The dynamic mystery of the creative process is really what he let me into and let the film into. Milford has a really unique quality: He’s compelled to share the secrets of how he makes sense of making art. Ultimately that does become the content of the film. It’s really a film about creativity and creative process.

He seems like a very generous person in the way he shares his vision of the world.

I would go so far as to say he’s the most generous person I’ve ever met in my life. It extends far past his sharing of the creative process. As a teacher, his first instincts are to uplift everyone around him. He shares everything he has when you come to his house. You’re going to end up with a tasting menu from his garden, on top of a four-hour lesson, on top of him showing you the inner workings of a new invention. He’s extremely generous as a person, and I think anyone who has spent time with him would agree. 

Did you have any first impression of him or his music that stayed with you and made its way into the film?

I was a huge fan of avant-garde music and free jazz when I went to study with him. My impression of seeing him perform with the kind of vitality and the amount of energy that he was putting out was intimidating. There are narratives about that music that have to do with aggression and yet qualities that I didn’t find at all once I met the Professor. I showed up at his door extremely nervous, feeling like I had to present myself in a confident way, and it was just shattered. The moment he opened the door, he basically was so curious and interested about who I was and how—how he would put it, “how I was vibrating.” Then we played music together in my first meeting, which was so far beyond my wildest expectations. It wasn’t even anything I would have fathomed.

I was already pretty impressed by the music I had heard because it felt so expansive. That’s something that has stayed with me, and I definitely wanted the film to capture an expansive way of looking at an artist, something that didn’t close itself off or present a linear structure. I wanted the film to do what the music does, which is make the world seem more mysterious and strange and beautiful and complex—rather than present an encyclopedic entry on someone’s career.

When I saw him play live – before I met him personally – when the lights came on, the thing that struck me most was everyone around me was talking about feeling their heartbeat change. Some people’s faces were more flush, and people were crying—there was this huge energy shift in the room. I’ve seen it now dozens and dozens of times, but there’s something about his music and his performance which is so focused on the transmission of energy. In the film I wanted to make sure that every decision tried to preserve that potential for energy transfer. How can you take 90 minutes and have all the decisions be pointed toward this end of transmitting the most human energy through cinema? Milford’s focus on transmitting raw energy has led him down a different path than many other musicians. I wanted the film to show that—the potential of sound to change the world and to change someone’s mind and body. 

Who did you make the film for?

My first instinct when I had a sensible-sized cut was to bring it down to Milford and his wife and show it to them. I’ve learned so much from him, and you don’t always get a chance to tell your teacher how much you care about them and show them what you’ve been listening to. I’m not trying to say that all portrait documentaries need to be this way, but I always kept close to my heart that I wanted him to know that I was listening and the things he’s been saying to me weren’t falling on deaf ears.

It was also important that whatever cinematic version that manifested in the 90 minutes was one that he recognized as himself. I don’t think every film has to be that way, but it was important that this one was. I think about other people who have meant a lot to me, other heroes like John Coltrane, for example—I would love to be able to sit with him and understand the things that he cared about and feel some of the human energy that comes through. Going further into history, what kind of film would you want if people were making films about Leonardo da Vinci? Would you want a documentary about Leonardo da Vinci while he was alive that chronicled his career and listed all the different innovations in a linear way—or would you want to sit inside his studio and look at his notebooks and hear him talk about the relationships between the different things he’s interested in?

For the audience, I wanted to make the kind of film that, if you didn’t know about Milford, you would compelled to learn a little bit more. I didn’t want the film to be the end all and be all. There are a thousands films you could make about Milford Graves. He’s a super dynamic individual with a career that goes back to when he was 19 years old, and there are a thousand stories. There are a thousand films you could make. When it’s not easy to tell a simple story about a career, it becomes no story. Someone could come to this film as a gardener and find a way in, and come out having learned more about Milford’s work with the heartbeat. Or a drummer who was fascinated by Milford’s speed and dexterity could come out learning about the relationships of heartbeats and drum pattern.

I wanted this film to be one where you keep going deeper and deeper into his world. The film is definitely consciously constructed that way. The way the lessons are arranged are set up so you have time to reflect and have aesthetic experiences with music. Each lesson gets more and more intense until toward the end where there are things about major and minor scales and relationships with your tear ducts. You’re ready for that at that time because you’ve also not been taken away from learning the way Milford talks. It’s all built to provide that full access to the teaching. 

Anything else you want people to know before they see the film?

Throw away the metronome and listen to your heart.

MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS opens this Friday, August 24, at AFS Cinema.

MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS TRAILER from Full Mantis on Vimeo.

  • Contributed by Todd Savage

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