Jonas Mekas Retrospective
Few if any figures in the history of New York City film culture have left as large a mark as that of the Lithuanian filmmaker, critic, and poet Jonas Mekas. Rising to notoriety in the 1950s and ’60s as a champion of and mouthpiece for the New American Cinema, he founded and presided over such […]
2000|
288 minutes
Mekas’s career-spanning project of documenting his life, times, and relationships finds perhaps its grandest expression in his most monumental film diary, covering 1970 to 1999.
Jonas Mekas
1964|
68 minutes
Mekas’s second feature, a searing adaptation of Kenneth H. Brown’s play of the same name about the dehumanization of prisoners at a Marine Corps lock-up, has, per Time magazine at the time of its premiere, “a nightmare air that suggests Kafka with a Kodak.”
Jonas Mekas
1962|
75 minutes
Mekas claimed that his lyrical feature debut, a work of beatnik existentialism, “deals with the thoughts, feelings, and anguished strivings of my generation, faced with the moral perplexity of our times.”
Jonas Mekas
2004|
80 minutes
In what he considered his “first real video work,” Mekas captures a pivotal moment in his life: the first time he’d had to move in over 30 years, relocating from downtown Manhattan to Brooklyn, looking ahead to and meditating upon the future all the while.
Jonas Mekas
1976|
178 minutes
Continuing where Walden and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania left off—though moving backward in time—Lost Lost Lost is another epic of diaristic cinema, focusing on and using footage filmed by Mekas between 1949-63.
Jonas Mekas
1979|
96 minutes
Paradise Not Yet Lost focuses entirely on the events of 1977, with Mekas movingly organizing the film around the figure of his then-2-year-old daughter Oona, aiming to provide her with a cinematic record of this early year in her life. Screening with: This Side of Paradise
Jonas Mekas
1971-72|
82 minutes
Arguably the greatest achievement within his exploration of the film-diary form, Mekas’s fourth feature documents his return to the Lithuanian village of his birth for the first time since he and his brother Adolfas escaped from German labor camps and emigrated to the United States in the late 1940s.
Jonas Mekas
1964-69|
180 minutes
Perhaps Mekas’s masterpiece, this epic, convulsive, and radically subjective film-diary captures pivotal years in arts and culture in New York City, yielding a kaleidoscopic chronicle of people, places, happenings, and time’s passage
Jonas Mekas
1990 - 1995|
94 minutes
Three tributes to three key friendships in Mekas’s life: Scenes of the Life of Andy Warhol follows Warhol between 1965 and 1982; Happy Birthday to John documents a small birthday party for Lennon, held in a hotel room in Syracuse, NY; and Zefiro Torna is an emotionally reverberant and deeply personal homage to Fluxus founder George Maciunas.
Jonas Mekas
1964 - 1978|
109 minutes
This program collects three of Mekas’s shorter film diaries: Notes on the Circus gathers impressions from several visits to the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus; Notes for Jerome documents Mekas’s visits to Cassis with his friend, the filmmaker Jerome Hill; and In Between offers an evocative snapshot of a cast of Mekas’s friends, comrades, and fellow travelers.
Few if any figures in the history of New York City film culture have left as large a mark as that of the Lithuanian filmmaker, critic, and poet Jonas Mekas. Rising to notoriety in the 1950s and ’60s as a champion of and mouthpiece for the New American Cinema, he founded and presided over such stalwart fixtures of the underground and avant-garde film scenes as Film Culture magazine, the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and Anthology Film Archives. But he was also one of the 20th century’s most vital film artists, a master cine-diarist and something like a present-tense historian who documented the particulars of emigrant life in New York City. His immense oeuvre, produced across seven decades, encompasses rapturous tone poems that exalt the quotidian and transfixing portraits of the legendary artists in his orbit. Join us for a selection of Mekas’s most essential film and video works. This series is presented in conjunction with Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running, a major exhibition of his work on view at the Jewish Museum from February 18 through June 5, 2022.
Tickets now available!
In conjunction with FLC’s retrospective, Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running, on view at the Jewish Museum from February 18 through June 5, 2022, is the first U.S. museum survey of the Lithuanian-born filmmaker, poet, critic, and institution-builder who helped shape the avant-garde in New York City and beyond. The exhibition coincides with the centennial of Mekas’s birth and surveys his 70-year career. It includes 11 films, photography, and previously unseen archival materials that explore the breadth and import of Mekas’s life, art, and legacy in the field of the moving image. During the late stages of World War II, in 1944, Mekas was forced to flee his native Lithuania and was unable to return until 1971. The relationship between exile and creativity is always at the heart of his work and will be the exhibition’s central theme. Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running is organized by guest curator Kelly Taxter, with Kristina Parsons, the Leon Levy Curatorial Assistant at the Jewish Museum.
Organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan. Co-presented with the Jewish Museum.
