The 12th Avant-Garde Film Festival on the occasion of the centennial of Jonas Mekas’ birth, pays homage to one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking.
“Jonas Mekas’ Cinematic Work Retrospective” program consists of “Guns of the trees” (1961), “Walden (Diaries, Notes, and Sketches)” (1970), “Reminiscences of a journey to Lithuania” (1972), “Lost lost lost” (1976), “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” (2000), “Outtakes From The Life Of A Happy Man” (2012) by Jonas Mekas.
As a part of the retrospective “Stories of Cinema (III)”, film historian and curator of the retrospective Santos Zunzunegui will give an hour talk before the screening of film “Lost, Lost, Lost” (1976) in which he will go in depth about the figure of Jonas Mekas and his work.
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.
Organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan. Co-presented with the Jewish Museum.
The concert-performance “Mysteries” will take place in Kaunas Town Hall square and, two days later, June 24th, in the territory of the Evangelical Reformed Church of Biržai. The church is related to Jonas Mekas, since his uncle Povilas Jašinskas served there as a priest, and both, Jonas and his brother Adolfas, resided in the attic of its clergy house. Fortunately, the building remains to this day.
Jonas Mekas’ film “Mysteries”, which has never been screened in Europe before, will be performed live by the band “Rocket Sci & Friends”. Jonas Mekas’ friends from America, with whom he used to perform together, are coming to Biržai: Dalius Naujokaitis, Kenny Wollesen, Tony Scherr, Jonathon Haffner, William Shore. They are joined by Mekas’ Italian friend Giuseppe Zevola and Lithuanian Eugenijus Varkalis.
After the performance, the musicians will leave the premises of the event and continue to play in the nearby streets. The event combines live sound, cinema, improvisation and street art.
The performance will take place in Kaunas Town Hall square and, two days later, June 24th, in the territory of the Evangelical Reformed Church of Biržai. After the film performance, the musicians will leave the premises of the event and continue to play in the nearby streets.
Jonas Mekas’ film “Mysteries”, which has never been screened in Europe before, will be performed live by the band “Rocket Sci & Friends”. Jonas Mekas’ friends from America, with whom he used to perform together, are coming to Kaunas: Dalius Naujokaitis, Kenny Wollesen, Tony Scherr, Jonathon Haffner, William Shore. They are joined by Mekas’ Italian friend Giuseppe Zevola and Lithuanian Eugenijus Varkalis.
After the performance, the musicians will leave the premises of the event and continue to play in the nearby streets. The event combines live sound, cinema, improvisation and street art.
Screening of the film “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Jonas Mekas. “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” – poetic, non-chronological film diary of Jonas Mekas. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty. More information on this event can be found here.
Ismailia is a city in the north-east of Egypt. Ismailia International Film Festival (IIFF) is the first oldest festival specializing in documentary and shorts in the Middle East and Africa. The festival showcases the best of Docs, Shorts, and Animation from around the world. This year the programme of the festival will include the films made by Jonas Mekas.
Jonas Mekas always celebrated the poetry of film. Marie Menken was his favorite film poet. In this screening we will present the select films of Menken and Mekas and have the discussion about Menken’s influence on Mekas’ film style and their continuous friendship. The belief that filmmaking is just another way of taking notes shared by both artists will be a premise for the discussion. Marie Menken’s Glimpses of the Garden (1957), Notebook (1962) and Lights (1966) alongside Mekas’ Notes on the Circus (1966) and Cassis (1966) will be screened.
The post-screening discussion will follow. Select Mekas’ texts on Marie Menken will be exposed and some of his poems will be read.
A true supporter of freedom of artistic expression, in the early sixties Jonas Mekas fiercely fought some important battles against film censorship. He was the one who first wrote about Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and organized its theatrical premiere. Championed by Mekas, the film caused the backlash from NY film censors, licensers and some theater owners. In December 1963, Flaming Creatures was selected to be screened at the The Third International Film Exposition in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium, but fearing obscenity complaints the selection jury decided not to show it. Outraged by the decision, Mekas resigned from the position of the festival’s jury and organized special screenings of Flaming Creatures in his hotel room attended by known European filmmakers, including Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Roman Polanski and others, all subject to arrest by the local police. In 1964, Mekas kept showing Flaming Creatures across screening spaces in New York, often as part of the so-called “infamous surprise program” that also included films by Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, Ron Rice and others.
Celebrating Mekas’ dedication to the advocacy of the artistic freedom in this screening we will show several films that will be announced in early February. The post-screening discussion will follow. Some important documents on Mekas fights against censorship will be exhibited and presented by Sebastian Mekas.
The Cinémathèque Française in Paris will mark a celebration of Jonas Mekas’ Centennial with a comprehensive film retrospective. The programme, prepared in collaboration with Pip Chodorov, consisting of 17 films and 15 short films by Jonas Mekas and followed by the roundtables and discussions will give an opportunity for the cinema-going public to go deep into the works of one of the greatest literary and visual poets in the contemporary film history.
The complete list of films and events of this programme is available here.
