Jonas Mekas (; December 24, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American

avant-garde cinema Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwide. Mekas was active in New York City, where he co-founded

Anthology Film Archives Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and the journal '' Film Culture''. He was also the first film critic for ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...

''. In the 1960s, Mekas launched anti-censorship campaigns in defense of the LGBTQ-themed films of

Jean Genet Jean Genet (; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels '' The Thief ...

and Jack Smith, garnering support from cultural figures including

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...

Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even ...

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Maile ...

Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay " Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. He ...

. Mekas mentored and supported many prominent American artists and filmmakers, including

Ken Jacobs Ken Jacobs (born May 25, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American experimental filmmaker. His style often involves the use of found footage which he edits and manipulates. He has also directed films using his own footage. Ken Jacobs directe ...

Peter Bogdanovich Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian. One of the " New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he was hired to work on ...

Chantal Akerman Chantal Anne Akerman (; 6 June 19505 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for films such as ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles' ...

, Richard Foreman,

John Waters John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...

Barbara Rubin Barbara Rubin (1945–1980) was an American filmmaker and performance artist. She is best known for her landmark 1963 underground film ''Christmas on Earth''. Life and career Barbara Rubin grew up in the Cambria Heights neighborhood of Queens, ...

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

, and

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, incl ...

. He helped launch the writing careers of the critics Andrew Sarris,

Amy Taubin Amy Taubin (born September 10, 1938) is an American author and film critic. She is a contributing editor for two prominent film magazines, the British ''Sight & Sound'' and the American ''Film Comment''. She has also written regularly for '' The ...

, and

J. Hoberman James Lewis Hoberman (born March 14, 1949) is an American film critic, journalist, author and academic. He began working at '' The Village Voice'' in the 1970s, became a full-time staff writer in 1983, and was the newspaper's senior film critic ...

. In a 2018 '' New York Review of Books'' article,

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

Michael Casper wrote about Mekas's contributions to two far-right,

collaborationist Wartime collaboration is cooperation with the enemy against one's country of citizenship in wartime, and in the words of historian Gerhard Hirschfeld, "is as old as war and the occupation of foreign territory". The term ''collaborator'' dates to ...

newspapers under the Nazi occupation of Lithuania during World War II. Casper noted that Mekas’s publications in these newspapers were not anti-Semitic.

Early life

Mekas was born in Semeniškiai, the son of Elzbieta (Jašinskaitė) and Povilas Mekas on December 24, 1922. As a teenager, he attended the Biržai Gymnasium in Biržai, Lithuania. From 1941 to 1942, living under Nazi occupation, he published poetry and cultural profiles in ''

Naujosios Biržų žinios The Naujosios Biržų žinios (literally: New Biržai news) was the weekly (first few months - bi-weekly) on matters of society, politics and literature. It was published in the . It was published from 1941 to 1944. A total of 131 issues were pu ...

'', founded by the far-right, anti-semitic Lithuanian Activist Front. From 1943 to 1944, his early poems and cultural essays appeared in '' Panevėžio apygardos balsas'', a weekly local newspaper published by the fascist . In 1944, Mekas left Lithuania with his brother, Adolfas Mekas. They attempted to reach neutral Switzerland by means of Vienna, with fabricated student papers arranged by their uncle. Their train was stopped in Germany, and they were both imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn, a suburb of

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

, for eight months. The brothers escaped and hid on a farm near the Danish border for two months until the end of the war. After the war, Mekas lived in displaced persons' camps in

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

and

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

. From 1946 to 1948, he studied philosophy at the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 stud ...

. By the end of 1949 his brother and he had both secured sponsorship through a job in Chicago and emigrated to the United States. When they arrived, the two decided to settle in Williamsburg,

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed money to buy his first Bolex 16mm camera and began recording moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel's pioneering Cinema 16, and he began curating avant-garde film screenings at Gallery East on Avenue A and

Houston Street Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River i ...

and at the

Film Forum Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater at 209 West Houston Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget. Kare ...

series at Carl Fisher Auditorium on 57th Street.

Career

In 1954, Mekas and his brother Adolfas founded the journal '' Film Culture'', and in 1958 he began writing his "Movie Journal" column for ''The Village Voice''. In 1962, he co-founded The Film-Makers' Cooperative, and in 1964 the Filmmakers' Cinematheque, which eventually became Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde film. Along with Lionel Rogosin, he was part of the New American Cinema movement. He was a close collaborator with artists such as Marie Menken,

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

, Nico,

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

, Yoko Ono,

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...

, and fellow Lithuanian

George Maciunas George Maciunas (; lt, Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist, born in Kaunas. A founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers ...

. Mekas gave the film '' Heaven and Earth Magic'' its title in 1964/65. In 1964, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for showing '' Flaming Creatures'' (1963) and

's ''

Un Chant d'Amour ''Un chant d'amour'' (; English: ''A Song of Love'') is French writer Jean Genet's only film, which he directed in 1950. Because of its explicit (though artistically presented) homosexual content, the 26-minute movie was long banned. Plot Th ...

'' (1950). He launched a campaign against the censorship board, and for the next few years continued to exhibit films at the Filmmakers' Cinematheque, the Jewish Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art. From 1964 to 1967, he organized the New American Cinema Expositions, which toured Europe and South America, and in 1966 joined the 80 Wooster Fluxhouse Coop. Jonas Mekas LOC

In 1970, Anthology Film Archives opened on 425 Lafayette Street as a film museum, screening space, and library, with Mekas as its director. Mekas, along with

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a larg ...

, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, James Broughton, and P. Adams Sitney, began the ambitious Essential Cinema project at Anthology Film Archives to establish a canon of important cinematic works. Mekas's legs appeared in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's experimental film ''

Up Your Legs Forever ''Up Your Legs Forever'' is a 1971 film by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The film was made on 14 December 1970 on West 61st Street in Manhattan, New York City, though the couple did not have permits to work in the United States at that time. The fi ...

'' (1971). As a filmmaker, Mekas' own output ranged from his early narrative film ''Guns of the Trees (''1961) to "diary films" such as ''

Walden ''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...

'' (1969); ''Lost, Lost, Lost'' (1975), '' Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania'' (1972), ''Zefiro Torna'' (1992), and '' As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty'' (2000), which have been screened at festivals and museums around the world. Mekas' diary films offered a new perspective to the genre and portrayed the cinematic avant-garde scene of the 1960s. Mekas expanded the scope of his practice with his later works of multi-monitor installations, sound immersion pieces and "frozen-film" prints. Together they offer a new experience of his classic films and a novel presentation of his more recent video work. His work has been exhibited at the 51st

Venice Biennial The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest o ...

, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, the Ludwig Museum, the

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery ...

, the Jewish Museum, and the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center. Jonas Mekas (6457343183) (cropped)

In 2007, Mekas released one film every day on his website, a project he entitled "The 365 Day Project." The online diary is still ongoing on Jonas Mekas' official website. It was celebrated in 2015 with a show titled "The Internet Saga" which was curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi at Palazzo Foscari Contarini on the occasion of the 56th Venice Biennale of Visual Arts. Beginning in the 1970s, Mekas taught film courses at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSS ...

, MIT,

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique ...

, and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

. Additionally, Mekas was a writer and published his poems and prose in Lithuanian, French, German, and English. His work has been translated into English by the Lithuanian-American poet Vyt Bakaitis in such collections as ''Daybooks: 1970-1972'' (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2003) and a bilingual anthology of modern Lithuanian verse, ''Gyvas atodūsis/Breathing Free, poems'' (Lietuvos, 2001). Mekas published many of his journals and diaries, including ''I Had Nowhere to Go: Diaries, 1944–1954'' and ''Letters from Nowhere'', as well as articles on film criticism, theory, and technique. In 2007, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center was opened in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urba ...

. One of Mekas' last exhibitions, "Notes from Downtown," took place at James Fuentes Gallery on the Lower East Side in 2018. Mekas's last work, ''Requiem,'' premiered posthumously at The Shed in New York City on November 1, 2019. The 84-minute video was commissioned by The Shed and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. It screened in tandem with a performance of Verdi's ''Requiem'', conducted by Teodor Currentzis and performed by the musicAeterna orchestra. In 2018, Ina Navazelskis, an oral historian at the National Institute for Holocaust Documentation,

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust h ...

interviewed Mekas for their Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive. There, he discussed his memories of World War II "Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running", the filmmaker's first retrospective in the United States, was organized by Guest Curator Kelly Taxter and on view at the Jewish Museum in the spring of 2022. German filmmaker Peter Sempel has made three films about Mekas' works and life, ''Jonas in the Desert'' (1991), ''Jonas at the Ocean'' (2004), and '' Jonas in the Jungle'' (2013).

Personal life

Mekas married Hollis Melton in 1974. They had two children, a daughter, Oona, and a son, Sebastian. His family is featured in Jonas's films, including ''Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man'' and ''As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty''. Mekas died at his home in Brooklyn on January 23, 2019, at the age of 96. Mekas is the subject of a documentary, ''Fragments of Paradise'', which premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. The film received the award for Best Documentary on Cinema at the Festival.

Controversy over World War II activities

Mekas long maintained that, while working for local newspapers, he also clandestinely-transcribed BBC broadcasts in support of the underground. In 2018, an article in the New York Review of Books by historian Michael Casper challenged Mekas's versions of his wartime activities. Casper claims that Mekas participated "in an underground movement in Biržai that supported the 1941 Nazi invasion of Soviet Lithuania" and worked for "two ultranationalist and Nazi propaganda newspapers, until he fled Lithuania in 1944." At the time, art critic and historian Barry Schwabsky penned a letter to the editor criticizing Casper's essay. He and Casper had an exchange of letters in the ''New York Review of Books''. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website biography of Mekas maintains that he participated in both the anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi undergrounds. Following the 2022 exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York, Casper published an article entitled "World War II Revisionism at the Jewish Museum" in ''

Jewish Currents ''Jewish Currents'' is a progressive, secular Jewish quarterly magazine and news site whose content reflects the politics of the Jewish left. It features independent journalism, breaking news, political commentary, analysis, and a "countercultur ...

''. There, he argued that the "art world at large remains deeply invested in the story of Mekas the anti-Nazi," thus perpetuating revisionism not only erasing his roles, but casting him as an anti-Nazi hero. In an article for the

Jewish Telegraphic Agency The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) is an international news agency and wire service, founded in 1917, serving Jewish community newspapers and media around the world as well as non-Jewish press, with about 70 syndication clients listed on its we ...

on Casper's charges against the Jewish Museum, journalist Asaf Shalev also pointed out that a two different memos were circulated among the museum employees to dismiss Casper's article. Kelly Taxter, the guest curator of the exhibit, responded to Casper's historical research by saying that "the tone of these emails is often aggressive." This was based on emails shared by the Mekas family, which Shalev also had access to, although Shalev wrote that "Nothing on there looked to me like Casper was bullying Mekas or that Mekas get bullied." Sovietologist Robert van Voren voiced criticisms of Casper's articles. Saulius Sužiedėlis argued, “The review format of the articles allowed Casper to present judgements without the burden of buttressing his allegations with relevant sources and requisite detail. The resulting narrative turns Jonas Mekas’s life as a young man into something that it was not.” The film scholars

B. Ruby Rich B. Ruby Rich is an American scholar; critic of independent, Latin American, documentary, feminist, and queer films; and a professor emerita of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation at UC Santa Cruz. Among her many contributions, she is ...

, have shown support for his findings. In an article in '' Film Quarterly'', B. Ruby Rich stated that, upon Casper's findings, "The wagons started circling immediately to protect a sacred figure of the avant-garde."

Awards and honors

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

(1977) * Creative Arts Award,

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , p ...

(1977) * Mel Novikoff Award,

San Francisco Film Festival The San Francisco International Film Festival (abbreviated as SFIFF), organized by the San Francisco Film Society, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in in ...

(1992) *

Lithuanian National Prize The Lithuanian National Prize ( lt, Nacionalinė kultūros ir meno premija), established in 1989, is an award granted for achievements in culture and the arts. It has been awarded annually in six categories since 2006 (between 1989 and 2006 there w ...

, Lithuania (1995) * Doctor of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa,

Kansas City Art Institute The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission. It has approx ...

(1996) * Special Tribute, New York Film Critics Circle Awards (1996) *

Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, filmmaker, writer and intellectual who also distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, translator, playwright, visual artist and actor. He is considered one of ...

Award, Paris (1997) * International Documentary Film Association Award, Los Angeles (1997) * Governors Award from the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 6 ...

, Maine (1997) * Atrium Doctoris Honoris Causa,

Vytautas Magnus University Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) ( lt, Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas (VDU)) is a public university in Kaunas, Lithuania. The university was founded in 1922 during the interwar period as an alternate national university. Initially it was known ...

, Lithuania (1997) * Represented Lithuania at the 51st International Art Exhibition

(2005) * United States

National Film Preservation Board The United States National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) is the board selecting films for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. It was established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988. The National Film Regis ...

selects '' Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania'' for preservation in the Library of Congress'

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...

(2006) *

Los Angeles Film Critics Association The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) is an American film critic organization founded in 1975. Background Its membership comprises film critics from Los Angeles-based print and electronic media. In December of each year, the organiza ...

's Award (2006) *

Austrian Decoration for Science and Art The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (german: Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst) is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Austrian national honours system. History The "Austrian ...

(2008) * Baltic Cultural Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the field of Arts and Science (2008) * Life Achievement Award at the second annual Rob Pruitt's Art Awards (2010) * George Eastman Honorary Scholar Award (2011) * 'Carry your Light and Believe' Award, Ministry of Culture, Lithuania (2012) * Commandeur de l' Ordre des Arts et Lettres, Ministry of Culture, France (2013)

Filmography

*''

Guns of the Trees ''Guns of the Trees'' is a 1962 American black-and-white film by Jonas Mekas. It follows two young couples – Barbara and Gregory (Frances Stillman and Adolfas Mekas) and Argus and Ben (Argus Spear Juillard and Ben Carruthers). The film features a ...

'' (1962) *''Film Magazine of the Arts'' (1963) *'' The Brig'' (1964) - 65 minutes *''

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

'' (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) *''

'' (''Diaries, Notes, and Sketches'') (1969) - 3 hours *'' Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania'' (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'' (1969/1986) *''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) - 34 minutes *''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) - 35 minutes *''Notes on Andy's Factory'' (1999) *''Mysteries'' (1966–2001) *'' As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty'' (2000) - 285 minutes *''Remedy for Melancholy'' (2000) *''Ein Maerchen'' (2001) *''Williamsburg, Brooklyn'' (1950–2003) *''Mozart & Wien and Elvis'' (2000) *''Travel Songs'' (1967–1981) *''Dedication to Leger'' (2003) *''Notes on Utopia'' (2003) 30 min *''Letter from Greenpoint'' (2004) *

The Definition of Insanity (film) ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

(2004) (as Dr. Mekas) *''365 Day Project'' (2007), 30 hours in total *''Notes on American Film Director: Martin Scorsese'' (2007), 80 minutes. *'' Lithuania and the Collapse of USSR'' (2008), 4 hours 50 minutes. *''I Leave Chelsea Hotel'' (2009), 4 minutes *''WTC Haikus'' (2010) *''Sleepless Nights Stories'' (Premiere at the Berlinale 2011) - 114 minutes *''My Mars Bar Movie'' (2011) * ''Correspondences: José Luis Guerin and Jonas Mekas'' (2011) * ''Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland'' (2012) * ''Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man'' (2012) - 68 minutes * ''Requiem'' (2019) - 84 minutes

References

External links

Jonas Mekas' website

The Anthology Film Archives

Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center

Interview with Interview Magazine

Interview with 3:AM Magazine

Jonas Mekas "The Internet Saga", Venice

Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
* Jonas Meka
interview
with Our Culture Mag * Jonas Mekas in conversation wit
the ''Brooklyn Rail''

Jonas Mekas tells his life story at Web of Stories
* "To Barbara Rubin With Love" by Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas addresses his war time activities

Jonas Mekas at the Serpentine Gallery 2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mekas, Jonas 1922 births 2019 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American poets 20th-century Lithuanian writers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century Lithuanian writers American experimental filmmakers Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Film directors from New York City Fluxus Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz alumni Lithuanian artists Lithuanian emigrants to the United States Lithuanian expatriates in Austria Lithuanian expatriates in Germany Lithuanian experimental filmmakers Lithuanian film directors Lithuanian male poets Lithuanian refugees Lithuanian resistance members Lithuanian writers People from Panevėžys County People from Williamsburg, Brooklyn Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art Recipients of the Lithuanian National Prize The Village Voice people Writers from Brooklyn Cinema of Lithuania

Early life

Career

Personal life

Controversy over World War II activities

Awards and honors

Filmography

References

Further reading

External links