Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas (Lithuanian pronunciation: [ˈjonɐs ˈmækɐs]; born December 24, 1922) is a Lithuanian-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. In 1944, Mekas left Lithuania because of war. En route, his train was stopped in Germany and he and his brother, Adolfas Mekas (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.
Actor
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In the Mirror of Maya Deren
With IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN, documentary filmmaker Martina Kudlácek has fashioned not only fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking and influential artist but a pitch-perfect introduction to her strikingly beautiful and poetic body of work. Maya Deren is arguably the most...Watch Movie
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13 Most Beautiful: Jonas Mekas
Forty-five years after Andy Warhol’s seminal SCREEN TESTS, New York artist Conrad Ventur gathered together thirteen beautiful people from the Factory demimonde to recreate their earlier portraits. The new films follow Warhol’s minimalist design both in terms of framing and...Watch Movie
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Jonas
A verité portrait of Jonas Mekas making his daily rounds, JONAS shows us the underground impresario attending a peace rally, filming in Central Park, typing up notes at the Village Voice and projecting his latest rushes at the Film-Makers' Cooperative. A true New Yorker, Mekas seems to be...Watch Movie
Editor
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Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
The midwife of American avant-garde cinema, Jonas Mekas (along with his brother Adolfas) was unloaded in New York City by the United Nation Refugee Agency in 1949. There were surely worse places to end-up and Mekas was "hungry for culture," observing the immigrant community in...Watch Movie
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Cassis
CASSIS collapses a full day on the Mediterranean into a dazzling five-minute sketch. Time-lapse photography revels in the endless variations of atmosphere and light, with motorboats and sailboats sweeping across the bay like wind-up toys. The sudden flare of a lighthouse marks the end of the day...Watch Movie
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Notes on the Circus
Public spectacle provides an occasion for private reverie in Jonas Mekas's impressionistic sketch of the Ringling Brothers Circus, a key building block for his larger WALDEN project. The filmmaker's improvisatory camerawork generates a riot of color and movement, the visual...Watch Movie
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Williamsburg
A pocket-sized city symphony, WILLIAMSBURG collects some of the first images Jonas Mekas shot with a film camera in 1950 (along with footage from 1972 when he was returning to his old neighborhood as a visitor). Bygone Brooklyn is richly evoked in the everyday life of the street: the elevated...Watch Movie
Cinematographer
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Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
The midwife of American avant-garde cinema, Jonas Mekas (along with his brother Adolfas) was unloaded in New York City by the United Nation Refugee Agency in 1949. There were surely worse places to end-up and Mekas was "hungry for culture," observing the immigrant community in...Watch Movie
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Cassis
CASSIS collapses a full day on the Mediterranean into a dazzling five-minute sketch. Time-lapse photography revels in the endless variations of atmosphere and light, with motorboats and sailboats sweeping across the bay like wind-up toys. The sudden flare of a lighthouse marks the end of the day...Watch Movie
-
Notes on the Circus
Public spectacle provides an occasion for private reverie in Jonas Mekas's impressionistic sketch of the Ringling Brothers Circus, a key building block for his larger WALDEN project. The filmmaker's improvisatory camerawork generates a riot of color and movement, the visual...Watch Movie
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Williamsburg
A pocket-sized city symphony, WILLIAMSBURG collects some of the first images Jonas Mekas shot with a film camera in 1950 (along with footage from 1972 when he was returning to his old neighborhood as a visitor). Bygone Brooklyn is richly evoked in the everyday life of the street: the elevated...Watch Movie
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The Brig
"I went to see 'The Brig', the play, the night it closed. The Becks were told to shut down and get out. The performance, by this time, was so precisely acted that it moved with the inevitability of life itself. As I watched it I thought: Suppose this was a real brig; suppose I was a newsreel...Watch Movie
Director
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Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
The midwife of American avant-garde cinema, Jonas Mekas (along with his brother Adolfas) was unloaded in New York City by the United Nation Refugee Agency in 1949. There were surely worse places to end-up and Mekas was "hungry for culture," observing the immigrant community in...Watch Movie
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Cassis
CASSIS collapses a full day on the Mediterranean into a dazzling five-minute sketch. Time-lapse photography revels in the endless variations of atmosphere and light, with motorboats and sailboats sweeping across the bay like wind-up toys. The sudden flare of a lighthouse marks the end of the day...Watch Movie
-
Notes on the Circus
Public spectacle provides an occasion for private reverie in Jonas Mekas's impressionistic sketch of the Ringling Brothers Circus, a key building block for his larger WALDEN project. The filmmaker's improvisatory camerawork generates a riot of color and movement, the visual...Watch Movie
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Hare Krishna
Jonas Mekas's freewheeling camerawork leaves itself open to the possibility of a second Great Awakening in this impressionistic sketch of a Hare Krishna troupe taking to the streets. Later incorporated into WALDEN, this short stands as a fine example of Mekas’ participatory approach to filming. -...Watch Movie
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Report from Millbrook
Jonas Mekas' elegant report on a Poughkeepsie police department's raid of Timothy Leary's base-of-operations amply demonstrates the political potential of his diary filmmaking. The film's protest is lodged in the disjunction between sound and image, with Mekas' intimate,...Watch Movie
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Travel Songs
Drawn together from two decades of itinerant shooting in Europe, TRAVEL SONGS evokes Jonas Mekas' improvisatory approach to sightseeing, with Assisi, Moscow and Stockholm all filtered through his singularly animated lens. Though tuned to fine-grained particularities of landscape and culture,...Watch Movie
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Williamsburg
A pocket-sized city symphony, WILLIAMSBURG collects some of the first images Jonas Mekas shot with a film camera in 1950 (along with footage from 1972 when he was returning to his old neighborhood as a visitor). Bygone Brooklyn is richly evoked in the everyday life of the street: the elevated...Watch Movie
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The Brig
"I went to see 'The Brig', the play, the night it closed. The Becks were told to shut down and get out. The performance, by this time, was so precisely acted that it moved with the inevitability of life itself. As I watched it I thought: Suppose this was a real brig; suppose I was a newsreel...Watch Movie
Producer
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Williamsburg
A pocket-sized city symphony, WILLIAMSBURG collects some of the first images Jonas Mekas shot with a film camera in 1950 (along with footage from 1972 when he was returning to his old neighborhood as a visitor). Bygone Brooklyn is richly evoked in the everyday life of the street: the elevated...Watch Movie
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