Mindaugis Bagdon

August 9, 1934 - May 15, 2022

Mindaugis Bagdon died on May 15 in Kaiser Hospital, San Francisco, felled by a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 87 years old.

Mindaugis Bagdon, better known as Mindy, lived an unconventional life. He liked to observe that he had been a beatnik in the Beat Era, a hippie in hippie times and a punk after that. In 1978 he made a 17-minute performance film of Bay Area punk bands called Louder Faster Shorter. It has been shown in festivals from Zurich to Havana and is regularly revived in the Bay Area. Speaking of this period in an oral history interview, Mindy said, “In America when you get to a certain age you’re suddenly told by the urban environment, ‘What are you doing there pogo-ing? You are 45 years old, you should be at the PTA meeting.’ You have to want to find out something about your life to go to these scenes.”

He never had his eye on a standard career: higher pay, more responsibility, management. He tended to live in single rooms and earn just enough to subsist. This austere way of life gave him nearly complete independence.

He grew up in Los Angeles; his parents were Lithuanian immigrants. He served in the U.S. Army in Germany and married a German woman. The marriage did not last. He went to U.S.C. film school. He shot one of classmate James Ivory’s first films, The Sword and the Flute (1959) and volunteered on another notable U.S.C. project, Kent McKenzie’s The Exiles (1961). Thereafter he worked off and on as a camera assistant, for example on Carroll Ballard’s feature films Never Cry Wolf and Nutcracker and on Neil Young’s concert film Rust Never Sleeps. He worked as a grip and camera assistant on many other, less memorable films.

He was remarkably knowledgeable about cinema history and movies in general. For many years he was a regular at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. His favorite film was Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating. The P.F.A. has archived the 16mm. master of Louder Faster Shorter and can make new prints.

At different periods Mindy also made his living working in City Lights bookstore, serving as resident manager of his apartment building on Russian Hill, clerking at REI and working as a freelance carpenter/ handyman out of Cole Hardware.

At City Lights in the 1970s he got to know literary all-stars from William S. Burroughs to Bob Kaufman. He also built many of the store’s bookshelves. His love of books continued to sustain him in old age, when he spent most days reading in the Mechanics Institute library. His curiosity had no bounds; he read science and philosophy books aimed at experts just to push his limits. After a mild stroke immobilized him in 2019 he read books in the chair next to his bed.

Another challenge he relished was rock climbing. He rope-climbed for decades with friends in Yosemite and elsewhere in California. He enjoyed initiating new rock climbers.

A skilled carpenter, Mindy managed to shoehorn everything he valued into his room at the Hotel Triangolo on Columbus Avenue: books, outdoor and rock climbing gear, tools, souvenirs. He crafted his whole life in the same meticulous way. A memorial celebration, open to all, will be held on Saturday, August 20 at 11AM, in the 4th floor meeting room of the Mechanics Institute, 57 Post Street (near Montgomery BART).