Jonas Mekas
Biography
Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 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.
Personal info
Gender
Male
Birthday
1922-12-24
Place of birth
Semeniškiai, Lithuania
Images
Cast
My Country is Cinema
1998
0.00
The Velvet Underground
2021
6.79
Notes for a Déjà vu
2022
0.00
Cinema and Sanctuary
2019
0.00
Strong Medicine
1981
5.60
Persistence of Vision
1984
0.00
All About Bolex
2015
0.00
A Report from Venice
2015
0.00
Back from New York
2021
0.00
Michael Snow Up Close
1996
6.00
The Signing
2009
0.00
Anger Me
2006
8.80
Lavender
2010
0.00
My Birthday
2014
6.00
Home Movies 1971-81
1985
0.00
A Poet from the Lower East Side
1997
0.00
Belladonna
1989
0.00
Jonas Keeps Shooting Around
2002
5.00
River of Fundament
2014
5.90
Vertigo
2022
0.00
Galaxie
1966
0.00
Jonas Mekas Anthology
2022
0.00
Fragments of Paradise
2022
6.50
Notes for Jerome
1978
0.00
The Lamb
0.00
J. Mekas
1980
0.00
Occhio privato sul nuovo mondo
1970
0.00
Guest
2011
6.00
Viva Jonas!
0.00
Doc
2008
0.00
Just Visiting This Planet
1991
0.00
Jonas
1968
0.00
Maya Deren, Take Zero
2012
5.00
Four Shadows
1978
7.00
Diane the Zebra Woman
1962
9.00
On the Holy Spirit
2016
0.00
I Had Nowhere to Go
2016
0.00
In the Mirror of Maya Deren
2002
7.38
Reminiscences from Germany
2012
0.00
The Song of Avila
1967
6.40
Step Across the Border
1990
7.90
The Definition of Insanity
2005
10.00
The Love Merchant
1966
4.42
Notes on Marie Menken
2006
5.40
Going Home
1972
5.40
Salvador Dalí at Work
2006
5.00
No. 18: Mahagonny
1980
5.50
Jonas in the Brig
1965
0.00
Underground New York
1968
0.00
ORG
1979
4.90
Self-Portrait
1980
0.00
Tuesday Jan. 9, 2007
2007
0.00
My Conversations on Film
2013
3.20
Meet The Kuchar Brothers
2006
0.00
Jonas in the Desert
1994
5.50
Filmmakers
1969
0.00
Cinema Is Not 100 Years Old
1996
0.00
Journey to Lithuania
1971
7.00
Laboratorium Anthology
1999
0.00
Invocation: Maya Deren
1986
5.00
It Came from Kuchar
2009
7.00
Visionaries
2010
6.00
New York Conversations
2010
0.00
What Is Cinema?
2013
6.46
Question a Day
2008
0.00
Letter to John from Jonas
1999
0.00
Requiem for a Manual Typewriter
2000
0.00
Portrait Serie - Jonas Mekas
2010
0.00
Poem Posters
1967
0.00
Excavating Taylor Mead
2005
0.00
A Letter from Greenpoint
2004
0.00
A Matter of Baobab
1968
0.00
Makeshift (for Mekas)
2019
6.00
Gena Rowlands: A Life on Film
2019
7.20
Nitsch
2018
0.00
Dirt
1965
8.00
A Day in the Life of Andy Warhol
2015
5.00
Jonas Mekas in Kodachrome Days
2009
6.50
Award
1992
0.00
Andy Warhol Screen Tests
1965
8.00
Nico Icon
1995
7.50
Who Gets to Call It Art?
2006
6.70
My Mars Bar Movie
2011
0.00
Imagine
1972
7.00
Cinématon
1978
4.30
Paradise Not Yet Lost
1979
0.00
Beyond the Bolex
2018
7.00
365 Day Project
2007
10.00
Empire
1965
4.20
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1968
7.40
Lost, Lost, Lost
1976
7.00
Re: Maciunas and Fluxus
2011
0.00
Song of Avignon
1998
7.42
Quartet Number One
1991
7.50
Jonas Mekas, Friday 13th October
1996
0.00
![Screen Test [ST211]: Jonas Mekas](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500//5yEUYxLQWc71aL7OGrhSnpslsQO.jpg "Screen Test [ST211]: Jonas Mekas")
Screen Test [ST211]: Jonas Mekas
1966
0.00
Not in Our Name
2003
0.00
The Song of Central Park
2006
0.00
Tapes
2020
0.00
Postcard from America
1975
5.00
3.11 A Sense of Home Films
2011
6.50
Elegy for J.M.
2019
0.00
Jonas Towards Broadway
2019
0.00
Axiom of Choice
2003
0.00
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016
0.00
Tiny Tim: King for a Day
2020
6.08
EXPRMNTL
2016
0.00
The Sin of Jesus
1961
4.80
The Invisible Father
2021
0.00
Sunday December 30, 2007
2007
0.00
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1968
7.40
Notes in Lifestyle Margins
2002
0.00
Jonas Mekas in Budapest
1993
0.00
Vies et morts d'Andy Warhol
2005
0.00
Jonas Mekas in Paris 10/97
1998
0.00
A Mixtape for Stom
2025
0.00
Filmstudio, mon amour
2015
10.00
Shooting Guns
1966
0.00