Jonas Mekas

Jonas
Mekas

“We do not want rosy films, we want them the color of blood.”

Jonas Mekas is one of the giants of the film world, a member of the cinematic vanguard that has charged headlong into the uncharted territories. Along with Deren, Brakhage, Snow and Jacobs, he has helped ...

Films

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    Lost, Lost, Lost
    Experimental

    Lost, Lost, Lost
    Jonas Mekas

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 178 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    Hare Krishna
    Experimental

    Hare Krishna
    Jonas Mekas

    16mm, color, sound, 4 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Arts / Artists
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
    • Spiritual / Mystical
    • Beat Era
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    Walden
    Experimental

    Walden
    Jonas Mekas

    16mm, color, sound, 180 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    Guns of the Trees
    Experimental
    Narrative

    Guns of the Trees
    Jonas Mekas

    16mm, black and white, sound, 75 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, 35mm, DVD PAL
    • Psychology / Mental Health
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    Film Magazine of the Arts
    Experimental

    Film Magazine of the Arts
    Jonas Mekas

    16mm, color, sound, 20 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Arts / Artists
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    Jonas Mekas Box Set
    Documentary
    Experimental

    Jonas Mekas Box Set
    Jonas Mekas

    color and b/w, sound, 900 min
    Rental format: DVD PAL
    • Arts / Artists
    • Biography / Autobiography
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    The Brig
    Experimental

    The Brig
    Jonas Mekas

    16mm, black and white, sound, 68 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, DVD PAL
    • Political / Social Activism
    • Literarature / Theater
    • Beat Era
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    Award Presentation to Andy Warhol
    Experimental

    Award Presentation to Andy Warhol
    Jonas Mekas

    16mm, black and white, sound, 12 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Arts / Artists
    • Comedy
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    Visions of Warhol
    Documentary
    Experimental

    Visions of Warhol
    Jonas Mekas

    black and white, silent and sound, 56 min
    Rental format: DVD PAL

Biography

He is regarded as "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema" and is one of the founding members of both The Film-Makers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives, as well as being a lauded film critic and a filmmaker. He has been consistently making films since the 1960's and has had his works shown all across the globe.

Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in the farming village of Semeniškiai, Lithuania. He currently lives and works in New York City. In 1944, he and his brother Adolfas were taken by the Nazis to a forced labor camp in Elmshorn, Germany. After the War he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz. At the end of 1949 the UN Refugee Organization brought both brothers to New York City, where they settled down in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Two months after his arrival in New York he borrowed money to buy his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of his life. He soon got deeply involved in the American Avant-Garde film movement. In 1954, together with his brother, he started Film Culture magazine, which soon became the most important film publication in the US. In 1958 he began his legendary Movie Journal column in the Village Voice. In 1962 he founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative, and in 1964 the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde cinema, and a screening venue.

During all this time he continued writing poetry and making films. To this date he has published more than 20 books of prose and poetry, which have been translated into over a dozen languages. His Lithuanian poetry is now part of Lithuanian classic literature and his films can be found in leading museums around the world. He is largely credited for developing the diaristic forms of cinema. Mekas has also been active as an academic, teaching at the New School for Social Research, the International Center for Photography, Cooper Union, New York University, and MIT.

Mekas' film The Brig was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1963. Other films include Walden (1969), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), Lost Lost Lost (1975), Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990), Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992), As I was Moving Ahead I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000), Letter from Greenpoint (2005), Sleepless Nights Stories (2011) and Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man. In 2007, he completed a series of 365 short films released on the internet -- one film every day -- and since then has continued to share new work on his website.

Since 2000, Mekas has expanded his work into the area of film installations, exhibiting at the Serpentine Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), PS1 Contemporary Art Center MoMA, Documenta of Kassel, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Venice Biennale.

Archive

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    Note from Jonas Mekas to the Projectionist

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    40:04

    MM Serra and David Weinstein interview with Jonas Mekas