Jonas Mekas
Biography
Jonas Mekas (12-24-1922 - 1-23-2019) was born in the farming village of Semeniškiai, Lithuania. 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.
Movies (128)
A Mixtape for Stom
2025
Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
2023
Jonas Mekas Anthology
2022
Fragments of Paradise
2022
Film: The Living Record of Our Memory
2022
Vertigo
2022
Notes for a Déjà vu
2022
Back from New York
2021
The Velvet Underground
2021
9/11: Life Under Attack
2021
The Invisible Father
2021
Tapes
2020
Tiny Tim: King for a Day
2020
Elegy for J.M.
2019
Sebastian and Jonas Leaving the Party
2019
Cinema and Sanctuary
2019
Self Discovery for Social Survival
2019
Gena Rowlands: A Life on Film
2019
Makeshift (for Mekas)
2019
Keep singing: a tribute to Jonas Mekas
2019
Beyond the Bolex
2018
Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground
2018
George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus
2018
Nitsch
2018
I Don't Know Which Tree It Comes From that Fragrance
2017
On the Holy Spirit
2016
EXPRMNTL
2016
I Had Nowhere to Go
2016
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016
Últimas correspondencias
2016
Filmstudio, mon amour
2015
A Day in the Life of Andy Warhol
2015
Behind the Artist: Andy Warhol, an American Prophet
2015
A Report from Venice
2015
All About Bolex
2015
My Birthday
2014
River of Fundament
2014
My Conversations on Film
2013
What Is Cinema?
2013
Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man
2012
Reminiscences from Germany
2012
My Mars Bar Movie
2011
3.11 A Sense of Home Films
2011
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
2011
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
2011
Guest
2011
Re: Maciunas and Fluxus
2011
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
2011
New York Conversations
2010
Lavender
2010
Visionaries
2010
Jonas Mekas in Kodachrome Days
2009
It Came from Kuchar
2009
The Signing
2009
Doc
2008
Question a Day
2008
Andy Warhol's Factory People... Inside the Sixties Silver Factory
2008
Notes on an American Film Director at Work
2008
365 Day Project
2007
Sunday December 30, 2007
2007
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
2007
Tuesday Jan. 9, 2007
2007
The Song of Central Park
2006
Anger Me
2006
Who Gets to Call It Art?
2006
Meet The Kuchar Brothers
2006
The Definition of Insanity
2005
Vies et morts d'Andy Warhol
2005
Excavating Taylor Mead
2005
Axiom of Choice
2003
Jonas Keeps Shooting Around
2002
In the Mirror of Maya Deren
2002
Notes in Lifestyle Margins
2002
A Letter to Penny Arcade
2001
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
2000
Jonas Mekas in Paris 10/97
1998
Song of Avignon
1998
Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit
1997
A Poet from the Lower East Side
1997
Jonas Mekas, Friday 13th October
1996
Michael Snow Up Close
1996
Cinema Is Not 100 Years Old
1996
Nico Icon
1995
Jonas in the Desert
1994
Jonas Mekas in Budapest
1993
Award
1992
Quartet Number One
1991
Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol
1990
Step Across the Border
1990
Belladonna
1989
Warhol's Cinema 1963-1968: Mirror for the Sixties
1989
Invocation: Maya Deren
1986
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
1986
Fire in the East: A Portrait of Robert Frank
1986
Home Movies 1971-81
1985
Persistence of Vision
1984
Strong Medicine
1981
The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man
1981
Self-Portrait
1980
J. Mekas
1980
ORG
1979
Cinématon
1978
Four Shadows
1978
Notes for Jerome
1978
Lost, Lost, Lost
1976
Postcard from America
1975
‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen
1974
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
1973
Imagine
1972
Going Home
1972
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
1972
Journey to Lithuania
1971
Occhio privato sul nuovo mondo
1970
Filmmakers
1969
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1968
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1968
A Matter of Baobab
1968
Underground New York
1968
The Song of Avila
1967
Poem Posters
1967
![Screen Test [ST211]: Jonas Mekas](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimage.tmdb.org%2Ft%2Fp%2Fw500%2F5yEUYxLQWc71aL7OGrhSnpslsQO.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
Screen Test [ST211]: Jonas Mekas
1966
Galaxie
1966
Shooting Guns
1966
Andy Warhol Screen Tests
1965
Jonas in the Brig
1965
Empire
1965
Salvador Dalí at Work
1964
