Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas (Lithuanian: [ˈjonɐs ˈmækɐs]; December 24,[1] 1922 – January 23, 2019)[2] was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema" on many occasions. His work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwide.[3]

Jonas Mekas
Mekas in 2008
Born(1922-12-24)December 24, 1922
Semeniškiai, Lithuania
DiedJanuary 23, 2019(2019-01-23) (aged 96)
New York City, U.S.
NationalityLithuanian-American
Alma materUniversity of Mainz
Occupation
  • Poet
  • filmmaker
  • artist
Years active1954–2019
MovementAvant-garde cinema
Spouse(s)Hollis Melton
Children2
AwardsLithuanian National Prize (1995)
Signature

Life and career

Mekas was born in Semeniškiai, the son of Elzbieta (Jašinskaitė) and Povilas Mekas.[4] In 1944, Mekas left Lithuania during the escalating conflict of World War II. En route, his train was stopped in Germany where he and his brother, Adolfas Mekas (1925–2011), were imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn, a suburb of Hamburg, for eight months. The brothers escaped to hide on a farm near the Danish border two months until the end of the war. After the war, Mekas lived in displaced persons' camps in Wiesbaden and Kassel. From 1946 to 1948, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz. By the end of 1949 his brother and he had both secured sponsorship through a job in Chicago and emigrated to the U.S., once arriving in New York City the two decided to settle instead in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed money to buy his first Bolex 16mm camera and began recording moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel's pioneering Cinema 16, and he began curating avant-garde film screenings at Gallery East on Avenue A and Houston Street and at the Film Forum series at Carl Fisher Auditorium on 57th Street.[5]

In 1954, together with his brother Adolfas Mekas, he founded Film Culture, and in 1958 he began writing his "Movie Journal" column for The Village Voice. In 1962, he co-founded Film-Makers' Cooperative and the Filmmakers' Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde film. Along with Lionel Rogosin, he was part of the New American Cinema movement. He was a close collaborator with artists such as Marie Menken,[6] Andy Warhol,[7] Nico, Allen Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, John Lennon,[8] Salvador Dalí, and fellow Lithuanian George Maciunas.

Mekas gave the film Heaven and Earth Magic its title in 1964/65.

In 1964, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for showing Flaming Creatures (1963) and Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour (1950). He launched a campaign against the censorship board, and for the next few years continued to exhibit films at the Film-makers' Cinemathèque, the Jewish Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art. From 1964 to 1967, he organized the New American Cinema Expositions, which toured Europe and South America, and in 1966 joined 80 Wooster Fluxhouse Coop.

Jonas Mekas during his visit to Biržai, Lithuania in 1971

In 1970, Anthology Film Archives opened on 425 Lafayette Street as a film museum, screening space, and a library, with Mekas as its director. Mekas, along with Stan Brakhage, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, James Broughton, and P. Adams Sitney, began the ambitious Essential Cinema project at Anthology Film Archives to establish a canon of important cinematic works. Mekas's legs appeared in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's experimental film Up Your Legs Forever (1971).[9]

Mekas in 1977

As a filmmaker, Mekas' own output ranged from his early narrative film (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to "diary films" such as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost (1975); Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), Zefiro Torna (1992), and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, which have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world. Mekas' "diary films" offered a new perspective to the genre and portrayed the cinematic avant-garde scene of the 1960s.

Mekas expanded the scope of his practice with his later works of multi-monitor installations, sound immersion pieces and "frozen-film" prints. Together they offer a new experience of his classic films and a novel presentation of his more recent video work. His work has been exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennial, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, the Ludwig Museum, the Serpentine Gallery, and the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center.

In the year 2007, Mekas released one film every day on his website, a project he entitled "The 365 Day Project."[10] The online diary is still ongoing on Jonas Mekas' official website. It was celebrated in 2015 with a show titled "The Internet Saga" which was curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi at Palazzo Foscari Contarini on the occasion of the 56th Venice Biennale of Visual Arts.

Beginning in the 1970s, Mekas taught film courses at the New School for Social Research, MIT, Cooper Union, and New York University.

Additionally, Mekas is a well-known Lithuanian language poet and published his poems and prose in Lithuanian, French, German, and English. His work has been translated into English by the Lithuanian-American poet Vyt Bakaitis in such collections as Daybooks: 1970-1972 (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs: 2013) and the major anthology (bilingual) of modern Lithuanian verse: Gyvas atodūsis/Breathing Free, poems Lietuvos: Vilnius, 2001. Mekas published many of his journals and diaries, including I Had Nowhere to Go: Diaries, 1944–1954 and Letters from Nowhere, as well as articles on film criticism, theory, and technique. On November 10, 2007, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center was opened in Vilnius.

Mekas died at his home in Brooklyn on January 23, 2019, at the age of 96.[11][12] One of his last exhibitions, "Notes from Downtown," took place at James Fuentes Gallery in the summer of 2018 on the Lower East Side.[13]

Mekas's last work "Requiem" premiered posthumously at The Shed in New York City on November 1, 2019. The 84 minute video was commissioned by The Shed and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. It screened in tandem with a performance of Verdi's "Requiem," conducted by Teodor Currentzis and performed by the musicAeterna orchestra.[14]

A retrospective celebrating Mekas’s work was organized at the Jewish Museum in 2022.

Jonas Mekas in culture

The German filmmaker Peter Sempel has made three films about Mekas' works and life, Jonas in the Desert (1991), Jonas at the Ocean (2004), and Jonas in the Jungle (2013).

Awards and honors

Filmography
  • Guns of the Trees (1962)
  • Film Magazine of the Arts (1963)
  • The Brig (1964) - 65 minutes
  • Empire (1964)
  • Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1964)
  • Report from Millbrook (1964–65)
  • Hare Krishna (1966)
  • Notes on the Circus (1966)
  • Cassis (1966)
  • The Italian Notebook (1967)
  • Time and Fortune Vietnam Newsreel (1968)
  • Walden (Diaries, Notes, and Sketches) (1969) - 3 hours
  • Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971–72)
  • Lost, Lost, Lost (1976)
  • In Between: 1964–8 (1978)
  • Notes for Jerome (1978)
  • Paradise Not Yet Lost (also known as Oona's Third Year) (1979)
  • Street Songs (1966/1983)
  • Cups/Saucers/Dancers/Radio (1965/1983)
  • Erik Hawkins: Excerpts from "Here and Now with Watchers"/Lucia Dlugoszewski Performs (1983)
  • He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life (1969/1986)
  • Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990)
  • Mob of Angels/The Baptism (1991)
  • Dr. Carl G. Jung or Lapis Philosophorum (1991)
  • Quartet Number One (1991)
  • Mob of Angels at St. Ann (1992)
  • Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992)
  • The Education of Sebastian or Egypt Regained (1992)
  • He Travels. In Search of... (1994)
  • Imperfect 3-Image Films (1995)
  • On My Way to Fujiyama I Met… (1995)
  • Happy Birthday to John (1996) - 34 minutes
  • Memories of Frankenstein (1996)
  • Birth of a Nation (1997)
  • Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997)
  • Letter from Nowhere – Laiskas is Niekur N.1 (1997)
  • Symphony of Joy (1997)
  • Song of Avignon (1998)
  • Laboratorium (1999)
  • Autobiography of a Man Who Carried His Memory in His Eyes (2000)
  • This Side of Paradise (1999) - 35 minutes
  • Notes on Andy's Factory (1999)
  • Mysteries (1966–2001)
  • As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) - 285 minutes
  • Remedy for Melancholy (2000)
  • Ein Maerchen (2001)
  • Williamsburg, Brooklyn (1950–2003)
  • Mozart & Wien and Elvis (2000)
  • Travel Songs (1967–1981)
  • Dedication to Leger (2003)
  • Notes on Utopia (2003) 30 min
  • Letter from Greenpoint (2004)
  • The Definition of Insanity (film) (2004) (as Dr. Mekas)
  • 365 Day Project (2007), 30 hours in total
  • Notes on American Film Director: Martin Scorsese (2007), 80 minutes.
  • Lithuania and the Collapse of USSR (2008), 4 hours 50 minutes.
  • I Leave Chelsea Hotel (2009), 4 minutes
  • WTC Haikus (2010)
  • Sleepless Nights Stories (Premiere at the Berlinale 2011) - 114 minutes
  • My Mars Bar Movie (2011)
  • Correspondences: José Luis Guerin and Jonas Mekas (2011)
  • Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland (2012)
  • Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man (2012) - 68 minutes[17]
  • Requiem (2019) - 84 minutes[18]

Personal life

Mekas married Hollis Melton in 1974. They had two children, a daughter, Oona, and a son, Sebastian.[19] His family is featured in Jonas's films, including Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man.

Controversy over World War II activities

Mekas long maintained that, while working for local newspapers, he also clandestinely transcribed BBC broadcasts in support of the underground. In 2018, an article in the New York Review of Books by historian Michael Casper, currently Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Jewish History at Yale University, challenged Mekas’s versions of his wartime activities. Casper's research claims that Mekas participated "in an underground movement in Biržai that supported the 1941 Nazi invasion of Soviet Lithuania" and ran "two ultranationalist and Nazi propaganda newspapers, until he fled Lithuania in 1944." [20] He added that "This contradiction is at the heart of Mekas’s work. The war happened "before his eyes” but he was, as he writes in the introduction to I Had Nowhere to Go', “totally oblivious of my own life,” so he has few detailed memories to report. He has the authority of a witness but none of the responsibility of one."[21]

At the time, art critic and historian Barry Schwabsky penned a letter to the editor criticizing Casper’s essay. Schwabsky wrote, “The strong implication is that Mekas must have something more on his conscience than the survivor’s guilt that we’ve all read about".[22] Casper responded emphasizing that Mekas "has repeatedly manipulated his story, taking advantage of people’s ignorance of wartime Lithuania, to make himself appear, when useful, as victim, hero, or oblivious bystander." [23]

Of Casper’s initial findings, historian and Sovietologist Robert van Voren has written: “What I find the most disturbing about Caspar’s article is that he judges Mekas afterwards, and even though there is not a shred of proof that Mekas did anything other than be compliant, which in most cases 95 percent of the population would do, he still accuses Mekas and leaves sufficient room for doubt. He ignores the fact that if Mekas knew what happened to the Jews, which is quite likely, or saw the results of the massacre or, who knows, the massacre itself, he does not take the possibility into account that the young adult Mekas was going through such a turbulent whirlwind of emotions that certain deeply emotional and impressive events were repressed in order to be able to live on and remain sane.”[24]

Film scholar B. Ruby Rich expressed her support for Casper's revelations in Film Quarterly. There, she said that "Casper discovered, through his research, that Mekas shifted dates in his own chronology: he fled Lithuania not to escape the Nazis, who were already gone, but to escape the Soviets, who arrived in Vilna the day after he and his brother left the country. His rancor was directed at the Red Army, not the Nazis. His testimonies about surviving 'the camps' are tricky, since the places to which he refers were in fact “displaced persons” camps, not concentration camps.. If Mekas was a nationalist who hated the Soviets more than the Nazis and who dedicated himself to writing and literature while Jews were killed all around him, then those are facts that should be known."

Similarly, film critic J. Hoberman pointed out in The New Yorker: "I had my issues with Jonas—it was impossible not to, given his enormous authority and his eccentric right-wing politics".[25] In an article published in his personal blog, he also added that “For the historian Casper, Mekas was a witness. He is not looking for evidence of guilt but knowledge of what took place... 'I could not really relate to, emotionally, or understand rationally, the killing of Jews,' Mekas told Casper, 'I live in a very tightly closed circle drawn around myself'.[26]

In response to Casper’s research, shortly before his death, Mekas gave an extensive interview to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. There, he discussed his wartime activities.[27] The Museum’s website biography of Mekas maintains that he participated in both the anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi undergrounds.[28]

Kelly Taxter, a co-curator of the 2022 exhibit honoring Mekas at the Jewish Museum, weighed in on the controversy, arguing that “While Casper’s project of unearthing the long-repressed history of Lithuanian Jews is crucially important work, leveraging Mekas and his autobiography as a foil was misguided.”[29]

Following the 2022 exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York, Casper published an article entitled "World War II Revisionism at the Jewish Museum" in Jewish Currents. There, he argued that the "art world at large remains deeply invested in the story of Mekas the anti-Nazi," thus perpetuating revisionism not only erasing his roles, but casting him as an anti-Nazi hero.[30] Casper implicated the Jewish Museum as well as museums and galleries across the world, including in Tel Aviv.[31]

See also

Notes
  1. Mekas' passport shows December 23, 1922, the date sometimes listed as his "official" date of birth; however, he was actually born on December 24, 1922, as he confirms in this video interview Archived April 4, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  2. Needham, Alex (January 23, 2019). "Jonas Mekas, titan of underground filmmaking, dies aged 96". The Guardian. Retrieved April 2, 2019.
  3. "Interview: Jonas Mekas by Modestas Mankus". Our Culture Mag. Our Culture Mag. April 18, 2017.
  4. "Parodos - Maironio lietuvių literatūros muziejus". maironiomuziejus.lt.
  5. Jonas Mekas, Champion of the "Poetic" Cinema by Richard Brody in The NewYorker, April 21, 2016
  6. "Jonas Mekas, I find a kindred spirit in Marie Menken, Web of Stories". Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  7. "Jonas Mekas, Serpentine Gallery, London". The Independent. Retrieved November 16, 2018.
  8. "The private world of '60s legends". CNN Style. November 14, 2017. Retrieved November 16, 2018.
  9. Jonathan Cott (July 16, 2013). Days That I'll Remember: Spending Time With John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Omnibus Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-78323-048-8.
  10. Short Films Coming Soon to an iPod Near You, All Things Considered, November 5, 2006. Producer Ben Shapiro reports on a plan by filmmaker Jonas Mekas to make short films available as a podcast.
  11. "Jonas Mekas, avant-garde filmmaker and iconic New Yorker, dies at 96". BrooklynVegan.
  12. Weber, Bruce (January 23, 2019). "Jonas Mekas, 'Godfather' of American Avant-Garde Film, Is Dead at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
  13. Bloch, Mark (September 4, 2018). "Jonas Mekas: Notes from Downtown". The Brooklyn Rail.
  14. https://theshed.org/program/series/18-requiem
  15. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Jonas Mekas".
  16. "Reply to a parliamentary question" (PDF) (in German). p. 1879. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
  17. "Scenes from the Life of a Happy Man... The Films of Jonas Mekas". Harvard Film Archive. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
  18. https://theshed.org/program/132-requiem-film-screenings
  19. "Jonas Mekas Film and Videography". Retrieved February 12, 2017.
  20. Casper, Michael. "I Was There | Michael Casper". ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  21. Casper, Michael. "I Was There | Michael Casper". ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
  22. Casper, Michael; Schwabsky, Barry. "On Jonas Mekas: An Exchange | Barry Schwabsky". ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  23. Casper, Michael; Schwabsky, Barry. "On Jonas Mekas: An Exchange | Barry Schwabsky". ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  24. "Forgotten evil? Jonas Mekas and the trauma of the Holocaust – opinion". lrt.lt. May 2, 2021. Retrieved April 28, 2022.
  25. "My Debt to Jonas Mekas". The New Yorker. January 24, 2019. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
  26. "J. Hoberman – Why I cannot review Jonas Mekas's Conversations with Film-Makers". Retrieved May 1, 2022.
  27. "Oral history interview with Jonas Mekas - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  28. "Oral history interview with Jonas Mekas - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  29. Taxter, Kelly (2022). Jonas Mekas: The Camera was Always Running. New Haven: The Jewish Museum and Yale University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-300-25307-8.
  30. "World War II Revisionism at the Jewish Museum". Jewish Currents. Retrieved April 22, 2022.
  31. "World War II Revisionism at the Jewish Museum". Jewish Currents. Retrieved April 27, 2022.

References
  • Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg.) "As I Was Moving. Kunst und Leben" (Schellerten/Germany 2004) (z.m.a.K.), ISBN 3-88842-026-1.
  • Efren Cuevas, "The Immigrant Experience in Jonas Mekas's Diary Films: A Chronotopic Análisis of Lost, Lost, Lost", Biography, vol. 29, n. 1, winter 2006, pp. 55–73, .
  • Fashion Film Festival presents "The Internet Saga",
  • Roslyn Bernstein & Shael Shapiro, Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, www.illegalliving.com published by the Jonas Mekas Foundation.
  • Steven Watson, "Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties" Pantheon Books, 2003
  • Michael Casper, "I Was There". New York Review of Books, June 7, 2018.
  • Robert van Voran (May 2, 2021). "Forgotten evil? Jonas Mekas and the trauma of the Holocaust – opinion". lrt.lt. Retrieved April 28, 2022.
  • Inesa Brašiškè, Lukas Brasiskis, and Kelly Taxter, Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running. New York and New Haven: Jewish Museum and Yale University Press. 2022. ISBN 978-0-300-25307-8
  • Michael Casper, "World War II Revisionism at the Jewish Museum". Jewish Currents, April 21, 2022.

Further reading
  • Ivanov, Maksim. Jonas Mekas' Diary Films in: Lithuanian Cinema: Special Edition for Lithuanian Film Days in Poland 2015, Auksė Kancerevičiūtė [ed.]. Vilnius: Lithuanian Film Centre, 2015. ISBN 6099574409.
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