Jonas Mekas
Encyclopedia
Jonas Mekas (ˈjonɐs ˈmækɐs; born December 24, 1922) is a Lithuania
n-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema
." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.
(1925-2011), were imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn
, a suburb of Hamburg
, for eight months. The brothers escaped and were detained near the Danish border where they hid on a farm for two months until the end of the war.
After the war, Mekas lived in displaced person
camps in Wiesbaden
and Kassel
. From 1946-48, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz and at the end of 1949, he emigrated with his brother to the U.S., settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex
16-mm camera and began to record moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel
’s pioneering Cinema 16
, and he began screening his own films in 1953 at Gallery East on Avenue A and Houston Street, and a Film Forum
series at Carl Fisher Auditorium on 57th Street.
In 1954, he became editor of Film Culture
, and in 1958, began writing his “Movie Journal” column for The Village Voice
. In 1962, he co-founded Film-Makers' Cooperative
(FMC) and the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives
, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. The films and the voluminous collection of photographs and paper documents (mostly from or about avant garde film makers of the 1950-1980 period) were moved from time to time based on Mekas' ability to raise grant money to pay to house the massive collection. At times, Mekas personally paid its housing rent and, at low points in external funding, he had to restrict access to the collection. Easily, he can be credited with single-handedly saving large portions of the avant garde films and associated materials.
He was part of the New American Cinema, with, in particular, fellow film-maker Lionel Rogosin
. He was heavily involved with artists such as Andy Warhol
, Nico
, Allen Ginsberg
, Yoko Ono
, John Lennon
, Salvador Dalí
, and fellow Lithuanian George Maciunas
.
In 1964, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for showing Flaming Creatures
(1963) and Jean Genet
’s Un Chant d’Amour
(1950). He launched a campaign against the censorship board, and for the next few years continued to exhibit films at the Film-makers’ Cinemathèque, the Jewish Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art.
From 1964-1967, he organized the New American Cinema Expositions, which toured Europe and South America and in 1966 joined 80 Wooster Fluxhouse Coop.
In 1970, Anthology Film Archives opened on 425 Lafayette Street as a film museum, screening space, and a library, with Mekas as its director. Mekas, along with Stan Brakhage
, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka
, James Broughton
, and P. Adams Sitney
, begin the ambitious Essential Cinema project at Anthology Film Archives to establish a canon of important cinematic works.
Mekas' own output ranging from narrative films (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to documentaries (The Brig, 1963) and to “diaries” such as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost (1975); Reminiscences of a Voyage to Lithuania (1972) and Zefiro torna (1992) have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world. In 2001, he released a five-hour long diary film entitled As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, assembled by hand from an archive of fifty years worth of recordings of his life. Peter Sempel
filmed Jonas Mekas in the film Jonas in the Desert (1994). Mekas made an 85-minute film showing clips of 160 filmmakers he knew in Birth of a Nation (1995).
Mekas expanded the scope of his practice with his later works of multi-monitor installations. Presented as total immersive environments, they offer a new experience of his classic films and have been exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennial, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center.
In 2004, the dormant Eero Saarinen-designed
TWA Flight Center (now Jetblue Terminal 5)
at JFK Airport
briefly hosted an art exhibition called Terminal 5
curated by Rachel K. Ward and featuring the work of 18 artists including Mekas. The show featured work, lectures and temporary installations drawing inspiration from the idea of travel — and the terminal's architecture. The show was to run from October 1, 2004 to January 31, 2005 — though it closed abruptly after the building itself was vandalized during the opening party.
Beginning in the fall of 2006, Mekas planned to film 365 short videos for Apple Computer
's Video iPod
, releasing one a day on his website.
Since the 1970s, he has taught film courses at the New School for Social Research, MIT, Cooper Union
, and New York University
.
Mekas is also a well-known Lithuanian language
poet
and has published many of his poems and prose in both Lithuanian and English. He has published many of his journals and diaries including "I Had Nowhere to Go: Diaries, 1944-1954," "Letters from Nowhere," and "Just like a Shadow," as well as his articles on film criticism, theory, and technique.
On November 10, 2007, Jonas Mekas opened Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center
in Vilnius
.
In its August 2010 issue, the magazine Dazed and Confused published a 8-page feature story about Mekas.
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.
Biography
In 1944 Mekas left Lithuania because of war. En route, his train was stopped in Germany and he and his brother, Adolfas MekasAdolfas Mekas
Adolfas Mekas was a Lithuanian-born film director, and brother of Jonas Mekas. He is principally known for his work in the United States....
(1925-2011), were imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn
Elmshorn
Elmshorn is a town in the district of Pinneberg in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is located 32 km north of Hamburg at the small river Krückau, close to the Elbe river, is the sixth-largest city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...
, a suburb of Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, for eight months. The brothers escaped and were detained near the Danish border where they hid on a farm for two months until the end of the war.
After the war, Mekas lived in displaced person
Displaced person
A displaced person is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration.- Origin of term :...
camps in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
and Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
. From 1946-48, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz and at the end of 1949, he emigrated with his brother to the U.S., settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex
Bolex
Bolex is a Swiss company that manufactures motion picture cameras and lenses, the most notable products of which are in the 16 mm and Super 16 mm formats. The Bolex company was initially founded by Jacques Bogopolsky in 1927. Bolex is derived from his name. He had previously designed cameras for...
16-mm camera and began to record moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel
Amos Vogel
Amos Vogel was one of the most influential cineasts in New York. He is best known for his bestselling book Film as a Subversive Art and as the founder of the New York City avantgarde ciné-club Cinema 16 , where he was the first programmer to present films by Roman Polanski, John Cassavetes,...
’s pioneering Cinema 16
Cinema 16
Cinema 16 was a New York city based film society founded by Amos Vogel. From 1947 until 1963, he and his wife Marcia ran the most successful and influential membership film society in North American history, at its height boasting 7000 members....
, and he began screening his own films in 1953 at Gallery East on Avenue A and Houston Street, and a Film Forum
Film Forum
Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater located at 209 West Houston Street in New York City. It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a US$19,000 annual budget. Karen Cooper became director in 1972 and under her leadership,...
series at Carl Fisher Auditorium on 57th Street.
In 1954, he became editor of Film Culture
Film Culture
Film Culture was an American film magazine started by Adolfas Mekas and his brother Jonas Mekas in 1954, and is now defunct. It is best known for exploring the avant-garde cinema in depth, but also published articles on all aspects of cinema, including Hollywood films.Past contributors include...
, and in 1958, began writing his “Movie Journal” column for The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
. In 1962, he co-founded Film-Makers' Cooperative
The Film-Makers' Cooperative
The Film-Makers' Cooperative aka The New American Cinema Group is an artist-run, non-profit organization which was founded in 1962 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Lloyd Michael Williams and other filmmakers to distribute avant-garde films through...
(FMC) and the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives
__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...
, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. The films and the voluminous collection of photographs and paper documents (mostly from or about avant garde film makers of the 1950-1980 period) were moved from time to time based on Mekas' ability to raise grant money to pay to house the massive collection. At times, Mekas personally paid its housing rent and, at low points in external funding, he had to restrict access to the collection. Easily, he can be credited with single-handedly saving large portions of the avant garde films and associated materials.
He was part of the New American Cinema, with, in particular, fellow film-maker Lionel Rogosin
Lionel Rogosin
Lionel Rogosin was a maverick independent American filmmaker who helped pioneer a form of non-fiction filmmaking influenced by the traditions of Robert Flaherty and Italian neorealism.-Early life:...
. He was heavily involved with artists such as Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Nico
Nico
Nico was a German singer, lyricist, composer, musician, fashion model, and actress, who initially rose to fame as a Warhol Superstar in the 1960s...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
, John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
, Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, and fellow Lithuanian George Maciunas
George Maciunas
George Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...
.
In 1964, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for showing Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures is an American experimental film by filmmaker Jack Smith. Due to its surreal, graphic depiction of sexuality, the film was seized by the police at its premiere, and was officially determined to be obscene by a New York Criminal Court. The 43-minute featurette attracted media and...
(1963) and Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
’s Un Chant d’Amour
Un Chant d'Amour
A Song of Love is French writer Jean Genet's only film, which he directed in 1950. Because of its explicit homosexual content, the 26-minute movie was long banned and even disowned by Genet later in his life....
(1950). He launched a campaign against the censorship board, and for the next few years continued to exhibit films at the Film-makers’ Cinemathèque, the Jewish Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art.
From 1964-1967, he organized the New American Cinema Expositions, which toured Europe and South America and in 1966 joined 80 Wooster Fluxhouse Coop.
In 1970, Anthology Film Archives opened on 425 Lafayette Street as a film museum, screening space, and a library, with Mekas as its director. Mekas, along with Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage
James Stanley Brakhage , better known as Stan Brakhage, was an American non-narrative filmmaker who is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th century experimental film....
, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka
Peter Kubelka
Peter Kubelka is an Austrian experimental filmmaker. His films are primarily short experiments in linking seemingly disparate sound and images...
, James Broughton
James Broughton
James Broughton was an American poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance...
, and P. Adams Sitney
P. Adams Sitney
P. Adams Sitney , is a historian of American avant-garde cinema.-Life:He was educated in his hometown, at Yale University...
, begin the ambitious Essential Cinema project at Anthology Film Archives to establish a canon of important cinematic works.
Mekas' own output ranging from narrative films (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to documentaries (The Brig, 1963) and to “diaries” such as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost (1975); Reminiscences of a Voyage to Lithuania (1972) and Zefiro torna (1992) have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world. In 2001, he released a five-hour long diary film entitled As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, assembled by hand from an archive of fifty years worth of recordings of his life. Peter Sempel
Peter Sempel
-Filmography:* Ballett und Arbeit * Der Alte Mann und das Fahrrad * Burning Raven * Der Wilde Rabe - aka The Wild Raven* Dandy * Answer a Virgin's Prayer * Just Visiting This Planet * Jonas in the Desert...
filmed Jonas Mekas in the film Jonas in the Desert (1994). Mekas made an 85-minute film showing clips of 160 filmmakers he knew in Birth of a Nation (1995).
Mekas expanded the scope of his practice with his later works of multi-monitor installations. Presented as total immersive environments, they offer a new experience of his classic films and have been exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennial, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center.
In 2004, the dormant Eero Saarinen-designed
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.-Biography:Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father,...
TWA Flight Center (now Jetblue Terminal 5)
TWA Flight Center
The TWA Flight Center or Trans World Flight Center, opened in 1962 as a standalone terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport .for Trans World Airlines...
at JFK Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport is an international airport located in the borough of Queens in New York City, about southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, handling more international traffic than any other airport in North...
briefly hosted an art exhibition called Terminal 5
Terminal 5 (exhibition)
Terminal 5 was an art exhibition that took place in October 2004 at the then disused Eero Saarinen–designed TWA Flight Center at New York's JFK Airport....
curated by Rachel K. Ward and featuring the work of 18 artists including Mekas. The show featured work, lectures and temporary installations drawing inspiration from the idea of travel — and the terminal's architecture. The show was to run from October 1, 2004 to January 31, 2005 — though it closed abruptly after the building itself was vandalized during the opening party.
Beginning in the fall of 2006, Mekas planned to film 365 short videos for Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's Video iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, releasing one a day on his website.
Since the 1970s, he has taught film courses at the New School for Social Research, MIT, Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
, and New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
.
Mekas is also a well-known Lithuanian language
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and has published many of his poems and prose in both Lithuanian and English. He has published many of his journals and diaries including "I Had Nowhere to Go: Diaries, 1944-1954," "Letters from Nowhere," and "Just like a Shadow," as well as his articles on film criticism, theory, and technique.
On November 10, 2007, Jonas Mekas opened Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center
Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center
The Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center is an avant-garde arts centre in Vilnius, Lithuania.In opened on November 10, 2007 by the acclaimed Lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas. The premiere exhibition featured The Avant-Garde: From Futurism to Fluxus . Part of recently purchased Fluxus art collection,...
in Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
.
In its August 2010 issue, the magazine Dazed and Confused published a 8-page feature story about Mekas.
Awards and honors
- Guggenheim Fellowship (1966)
- Creative Arts Award, Brandeis University (1977)
- Mel Novikoff Award, San Francisco Film Festival (1989)
- Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, Ministry of Culture, France (1992)
- Lithuanian National Award, Lithuania (1995)
- Doctor of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa, Kansas City Art Institute (1996)
- Special Tribute, New York Film Critics Circle Awards (1996)
- Pier Paolo Pasolini Award, Paris (1997)
- International Documentary Film Association Award, Los Angeles (1997)
- Governors Award from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (1997)
- Atrium Doctoris Honoris Causa, Universitatis Vytauti Magni, Lithuania (1997)
- Represented Lithuania at the 51st International Art Exhibition Venice Biennial (2006)
- United States National Film Preservation Board selects "Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania" for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry (2006)
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Award (2007)
- Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (2008)
- Baltic Cultural Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the field of Arts and Science (2008)
Filmography
- Guns of the Trees (1962)
- Film Magazine of the Arts (1963)
- The BrigThe Brig (play)The Brig is a play written by former U.S. Marine Kenneth H. Brown . It was first performed in New York by The Living Theatre on 13 May 1963 with a production of it filmed in 1964 by Jonas Mekas. It has been revived in New York in 2007. It received an Obie Award.The play depicts a typical day in...
(1964) - Empire (1964)
- Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1964)
- Report from Millbrook (1964–65)
- Hare Krishna (1966)
- Notes on the Circus (1966)
- Cassis (1966)
- The Italian Notebook (1967)
- Time and Fortune Vietnam Newsreel (1968)
- Walden (Diaries, Notes, and Sketches) (1969)
- Reminiscences of a Journey to LithuaniaReminiscences of a Journey to LithuaniaReminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania is a 1971–72 documentary film by Jonas Mekas. It revolves around Mekas' trip back to Semeniškiai, the village of his birth. The film was named to the National Film Registry by the Librarian of Congress in 2006, for its "cultural, aesthetic, or historical...
(1971–72) - Lost, Lost, Lost (1976)
- In Between: 1964–8 (1978)
- Notes for Jerome (1978)
- Paradise Not Yet Lost (also known as Oona's Third Year) (1979)
- Street Songs (1966/1983)
- Cups/Saucers/Dancers/Radio (1965/1983)
- Erik Hawkins: Excerpts from “Here and Now with Watchers”/Lucia Dlugoszewski Performs (1983)
- He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life (1969/1985)
- Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990)
- Mob of Angels/The Baptism (1991)
- Dr. Carl G. Jung or Lapis Philosophorum (1991)
- Quartet Number One (1991)
- Mob of Angels at St. Ann (1992)
- Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992)
- The Education of Sebastian or Egypt Regained (1992)
- He Travels. In Search of... (1994)
- Imperfect 3-Image Films (1995)
- On My Way to Fujiyama I Met… (1995)
- Happy Birthday to John (1996)
- Memories of Frankenstein (1996)
- Birth of a Nation (1997)
- Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997)
- Letter from Nowhere – Laiskas is Niekur N.1 (1997)
- Symphony of Joy (1997)
- Song of Avignon (1998)
- Laboratorium (1999)
- Autobiography of a Man Who Carried his Memory in his Eyes (2000)
- This Side of Paradise (1999)
- Notes on Andy's Factory (1999)
- Mysteries (1966–2001)
- As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
- Remedy for Melancholy (2000)
- Ein Maerchen (2001)
- Williamsburg, Brooklyn (1950–2003)
- Mozart & Wein and Elvis (2000)
- Travel Songs (1967–1981) n
- Dedication to Leger (2003)
- Notes on Utopia (2003) 30 min,
- Letter from Greenpoint (2004)
- 365 Day Project (2007), 30 hours.
- Notes on American Film Director: Martin Scorsese (2007), 80 minutes.
- Lithuania and the Collapse of USSR (2008), 4 hours 50 minutes.
- Sleepless Nights Stories (Premiere at the Berlinale 2011)
Literature
- Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg.) „As I Was Moving. Kunst und Leben“ (Schellerten/Germany 2004) (z.m.a.K.) ISBN 3-88842-026-1;
- Efren Cuevas, “The Immigrant Experience in Jonas Mekas’s Diary Films: A Chronotopic Análisis of Lost, Lost, Lost”, Biography, vol. 29, n. 1, winter 2006, pp. 55–73. Available at http://dspace.unav.es/dspace/bitstream/10171/3268/1/Art%20Mekas%20Biography%20publicado.pdf
External links
- Jonas Mekas at IMDB
- Jonas Mekas' website
- A Conversation between Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage
- Interview with 3:AM Magazine
- The Anthology Film Archives
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center
- Jonas Mekas poetry in English
- A short documentary about Jonas Mekas (29mn)
- Jonas Mekas tells his life story at Web of Stories