Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas is a legend in the world of avant-garde cinema. Born in 1922 in Semeniškiai, Lithuania, Jonas and his brother Adolfas were taken by the Nazis to a labor camp in Elmshorn, Germany. After the War he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz, and in 1949 the UN Refugee Organization brought both brothers to New York City, where they settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. With his first Bolex camera, Jonas began to record and preserve the brief moments of his life, forging an invaluable connection between art and cinema. He quickly distinguished himself as a leader in the American Avant-Garde film movement, launching the influential Film Culture magazine with his brother in 1954 and writing his legendary Movie Journal column in the Village Voice. In 1962, Mekas founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative, and in 1964 the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, which eventually grew into the world-renowned Anthology Film Archives. To this day, he has published more than 20 books of prose and poetry, which have been translated into over a dozen languages and are now part of Lithuanian classic literature. He is also a highly regarded academic, having taught 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, and he has since dazzled audiences with an incredible array of films, such as 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. In the last two decades, Mekas has expanded his work into the area of film installations, exhibiting his masterpieces in some of the world's leading museums and galleries, including 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. And if you think that's impressive, just wait until you hear this - Jonas Mekas once filmed a movie in reverse! Yeah, you heard that right! Talk about the ultimate way to go "backwards" in time... Jonas Mekas' legacy is one of immense inspiration and innovation in the world of cinema, making his name an indelible part of film history.