Jonas Mekas

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Jonas Mekas

Birth: Dec. 24, 1922; Semeniskiai, Lithuania

Official Website: JonasMekas.com

Major Works: A Letter From Greenpoint (2005)
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
Zefiro Torna or Scenes From the Life of Scenes From the Life of George Maciumas (1992)
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life (1985)
Scenes of the Life Of Andy Warhol (1982)
Paradise Not Yet Lost (a/k/a Oona’s Third Year) (1979)
Notes For Jerome (1978)
In Between: 1964-68 (1978)
Lost, Lost, Lost (1976)
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972)
Walden (1969)
Notes on the Circus (1966)
Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1964)
The Brig (1963)
Guns of the Trees (1961)

Notes: Excerpted from official bio:

[Jonas Mekas] has been one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking or the “New American Cinema,” as he dubbed it in the late ’50s, playing various roles: in 1954, he became editor and chief of Film Culture; in 1958 he began writing his “Movie Journal” column for the Village Voice; in 1962 he co-founded the Film- Makers’ Cooperative (FMC) and the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. His 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); Zefiro torna, (1992) and As I was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2001) have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world.

Most recently, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center was established in Vilnius, Lithuania and exhibitions will focus on art and film collections by Mekas and his friend and artistic collaborator George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus art movement. Opening in late 2007, the Center will house an extensive avant-garde film archive and library and has plans to build a Fluxus Research Institute.