Jonas Mekas

Lithuanian-born Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) is regularly called the godfather of the American avant-garde. Mekas made several films, wrote poems and texts for The Village Voice and Film Culture, the magazine he started together with his brother. In addition to his texts and films, the importance of Mekas lies mainly in the context he created for other filmmakers. He organized several festivals and events, founded the New York Film-Makers’ Co-op and the Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important archives and screening sites for avant-garde cinema. 

Jonas Mekas
Thom Andersen, Jonas Mekas, 1964, 2005
COMPILATION
25.01.2017
EN

A strange thing occurs. The world becomes transposed, intensified, electrified. We see it sharper than before. Not in dramatic, rearranged contexts and meanings, not in the service of something else [...] but as pure as it is in itself: eating as eating, sleeping as sleeping, haircut as haircut.

Thom Andersen, Jonas Mekas, 1964, 2005
COMPILATION
25.01.2017
EN

A strange thing occurs. The world becomes transposed, intensified, electrified. We see it sharper than before. Not in dramatic, rearranged contexts and meanings, not in the service of something else [...] but as pure as it is in itself: eating as eating, sleeping as sleeping, haircut as haircut.

Jonas Mekas, 1965
ARTICLE
27.09.2023
EN

We look at Breer’s work and we begin to smile – lightly, a happy sort of smile, a happy feeling like when you see anything beautiful and perfect. It’s through an amazing control and economy of his materials that he achieves this; through the elimination of all the usual emotional, personal, biographical, sick material; by not giving in to temptations.

Jonas Mekas, 1969
ARTICLE
27.09.2023
EN

I am happy that Robert Breer got some recognition. I saw his new film, 69, and it’s so absolutely beautiful, so perfect, so like nothing else. Forms, geometry, lines, movements, light, very basic, very pure, very surprising, very subtle. Breer’s films do not get much public acclaim. His shows are not among the heavily attended. His films attract no noise. But they are among the best films made today anywhere. A new film by Robert Breer is an important event.