Anne König, editor and publisher of Spector Books, in conversation with Inka Schube, curator at Sprengel Museum Hannover, on the recently published second volume of Jonas Mekas’ autobiography Jonas Mekas: I Seem to Live. The New York Diaries, 1950-2011.
More information on this event will be available here.
Experimental poetry translation workshop to translate Jonas Mekas’ poetry into French, public poetry readings and discussions, musical evenings, followed by the publication at the end of the project.
Participants: Stéphane Bouquet (writer, poet and translator, scriptwriter and film critic), Jean-Baptiste Cabaud (poet and translator), Roxana Hashemi (poet and translator), Anne Portugal (poet and translator), Ainis Selena (translator), Marielle Vitureau (author, translator, correspondent for Radio France Internationale and Courrier international in the Baltic States).
On 17 September, 15:30 there will be a public presentation of the “Translating Mekas” project and bilingual reading at the Centre international de poésie, Marseille.
On 18 September, 17:00 there will be an open-air bilingual reading of the first translated poems at the Camargo Foundation, Cassis.
On 18 September, 18:30 there will be a concert “More music for Jonas” by Arturas Bumšteinas with the ensemble C. Barré at the Camargo Foundation, Cassis.
First monography of Jonas Mekas’ work in Polish, accompanying the retrospective at the New Horizons International Film Festival 2022. Mekas spoke first person singular in his film and was a virtuoso of home movies. His work relates to meetings and people and teach how to look with caution for ‘glimpses of beauty’, small, easily disregarded things. Andrzej Pitrus believes that referring the work of the Lithuanian artist asks for a specific approach: he remains in the sphere of Mekas’ sensibility and adapted the collage-like and fragmentary nature of his written and cinematic works. The chapters are to a lesser extent complete analyses and interpretations of particular Mekas’ pieces but rather they dialogue with the words of the artist, whose selected poetry, diaries and critical texts are enclosed within the book. In Mekas’ vein Pitrus adds personal elements and recounts in the book.
Andrzej Pitrus’ book will be presented during the New Horizons International Film Festival. The book will be presented twice on different days after two film screenings:
On 27 July at 15:15, there will be a book presentation after the screening of Jonas Mekas’ “Lost Lost Lost”.
On 28 July at 16:00 there will be a book presentation after the screening of Jonas Mekas’ “Paradise Not Yet Lost (Oona’s Third Year)”.
Released by Re:Voir Vidéo, this new deluxe boxset brings together 8 volumes of the “diary films” of Jonas Mekas in Blu-ray and DVD.
Mekas perfected a poetic, personal technique of filming his daily life in short bursts, with no plan or script, as one would write when taking notes or keeping a diary. The boxset features titles from 1950 to 2015 of the series “Diaries, Notes and Sketches”, restored from original film elements, some of which were never published before.
More information available here.
“In the American and the global context, Mekas is firstly remembered as the master of an avant-garde cinema, perhaps even more as an organizer, curator, and critic of that cinema. In the Lithuanian linguistic and cultural environment, he has another dimension, which is little known abroad, but is important – he is a poet. And here he is in no way inferior to the filmmaker” – Tomas Venclova.
The Publishing house “Odilė“ starts a series of selected writings by Jonas Mekas with the first volume “Jonas Mekas. Poezija” focused on the poetry of this artist. Authorized by his son Sebastian, a collection of selected works is compiled by the director and poet, friend and collaborator of Jonas Mekas, Julius Ziz (Žižliauskas). Accompanying words were written by the poet, literary critic prof. Tomas Venclova and musicologist, art critic prof. Vytautas Landsbergis, while the poems by Jonas Mekas written in English were translated into Lithuanian by the poet Kornelijus Platelis.
Follow the link here for more information on this volume.
Between 1950 and his death, the artist and impresario Jonas Mekas (1922–2019) made more than one hundred radically innovative, often diaristic films and video works. He also founded film festivals, cooperatives, archives, and magazines and wrote film criticism and poetry.
Edited by Inesa Brašiškė, Lukas Brašiškis and Kelly Taxter, Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running is the first major publication in English on this pivotal member of the New York avant-garde scene, presenting an extensively illustrated, in-depth exploration of his radical art and restless life.
Published by Yale University Press in association with the Jewish Museum, New York, and the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Vilnius.
More information on this book can be found here.
The Hebrew translation of Jonas Mekas’ long poem “Pavieniai žodžiai” will be published in Oh!, the best literary magazine in Israel. The poem and the opening essay by Ausra Kaziliunaite were translated from the Lithuanian by the poet and translator Sivan Beskin.
For more information on this publication please visit the link here.
The second volume of Jonas Mekas’s autobiography I Seem to Live. The New York Diaries, 1969–2011, published by Spector Books, continues with the meticulous description of his dense life in New York’s underground art scene. It begins with the seventies, a time when the Chelsea Hotel was a central hub of creativity and a temporary home for the filmmaker and critic. In 1970, Mekas co-founded Anthology Film Archives with Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage. Later, he bought the Courthouse building at 32 Second Avenue where Anthology remains today. It was during this period that Mekas returned to Lithuania and saw his family for the first time in twenty-seven years. With his first solo show at Jeu du Paume Paris in 1992, Mekas reached a wider audience beyond the film world. His international career as an artist had begun, with numerous exhibitions across the US, Europe, and Asia—as well as international publications, film projects, and travels.
Jonas Mekas finished editing his autobiography’s last volume when he was over ninety years old. Published posthumously, I Seem to Live. The New York Diaries, 1950–2011 stands on an equal footing with his cinematic oeuvre. The second and concluding volume of his diaries contains an extensive index of names.
Publisher: Spector Books.
More information on this book can be found here.
