Jonas Mekas

Born in Seminiskiai, Lithuania in 1922, Jonas Mekas today lives and works in New York.

 

The theft of the typewriter, with which Jonas Mekas – like his brother Adolfas an active member of the resistance – wrote illegal documents, made the siblings  emigrate to Vienna, in fear of being discovered. In the same year the were apprehended and placed inside a German prison camp. An illegal hideout in Schleswig-Holstein and a DP-camp during the post-war period were the further stages of their oddysee.

 

Until 1949, Jonas Mekas remains in Germany, a.o. Studying Philosophy in Mainz. In 1949 he emigrates to New York. Early documentary films on Brooklyn are produced in the beginning of the 50's.

 

In 1955 he founds the magazine Film Culture, which becomes the mouthpiece of the American film Avant-garde. In 1960 he is involved in the foundation of the New American Cinema Group and in 1962 he proclaims the New York Film-Maker's Cooperative. In 1970 he and P. Adams Sitney found the Anthology Film Archive in New York.

 

Today, Jonas Mekas is still active internationally as head of the archive, as well as filmmaker, writer and lecturer at American and European Universities. His work in the Anthology Film Archives, his films and his weekly column in the magazine The Village Voice have made him one of the most prominent representative of independent cinema in the USA and all around the world.

 

 

“The great achievement of the American Avant-garde film is the internalization of the film image: The emergence of a group of films, whose technique did not aim at using the film image for the objective representation of external events, but for the investigation of appearances of the inner shapes and visions of the filmmakers. Jonas Mekas is possibly best known as the big advocate of American Avant-garde cinema. Over decades, his work as a writer and organizer has made many aware of the accomplishments of this extraordinary cinematographic movement, who would not have gotten to know these films otherwise. But he is also a filmmaker himself, and in fact he ranges among the best artists of the movement he stands up for.“ (Fred Camper)

For further information on Jonas Mekas. visit  www.jonasmekas.com

in distribution:

A Visit to Hans Richter, 2003

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, 2000

Zefiro torna or Scence from the Life of George Maciunas, 1992

Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol, 1990

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life, 1985

Diaries, Notes and Sketches - Lost, Lost, Lost, 1976

Reminiscences from a Journey to Lithuania, 1971

Diaries, Notes and Sketches - Walden, 1965-68

The Brig, 1964