Jonas Mekas

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 AvantGarde 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 FilmMakers Cooperative and in 1964 the FilmMakers Cinematheque which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives one of the worlds largest and most important repositories of avantgarde 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 Outtakes 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 dArt 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