In celebration of the centenary of his birth, the Independent Cinema Office, Lithuanian Cultural Institute and curator Herb Shellenberger present the Jonas Mekas 100! UK Cinema Tour, a series bringing together several of Jonas Mekas’s most-celebrated films alongside lesser-seen works.
Screenings:
“Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania”, 1974
“The 365 Days Project: February 21”, 2007
“Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man”, 2013
“Jonas Mekas Shorts Films & Videos 1966-2017”
“As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty”, 2000
Jonas Mekas, godfather of avant-garde cinema, emigrated to New York in 1949 and over the next 70 years drove the rise of the independent film scene. Filmmaker KD Davison allows Mekas (who died in 2019) to tell much of his own story, as he creates his celebrated diary films and searches for those elusive “fragments of paradise” that cinema can uniquely provide. Mekas championed exhibition and pioneered distribution and preservation institutions. Along the way, he inspired countless artists, among them Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Jim Jarmusch. – Jaie Laplante
The first screening will be followed by a Q&A session with KD Davison, Oona Mekas, and Hollis Melton.
For more information on this premiere in New York please visit link here.
On the 100th anniversary of the famous lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Tokyo University will screen his film works. We will show his long experimental film “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1972), “Paradise Not Yet Lost, or Oona’s Third Year”(1974), and a short documentary of Jonas Mekas himself about his compatriot and Fluxus-artist George Maciunas, “Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas” (1992). All films are shown in 16mm. Also, a critic, Norio Nishijima will give a lecture on Jonas Mekas.
Jonas Mekas was not only a writer, poet, artist, and co-founder of Anthology, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and Film Culture Magazine, but also a filmmaker of great renown. Immediately following his death, we embarked on a multi-part, comprehensive retrospective of his films and videos, both widely celebrated classics and far more obscure works. That retrospective was all set to conclude with a fifth and final chapter in the spring of 2020, which was ultimately postponed due to the pandemic.
Now, as both a long-delayed continuation of the memorial retrospective, and a celebration of Jonas’s centennial (he was born on December 24, 1922), we present the series of screenings that were initially planned in 2020. The earlier chapters of the retrospective were devoted to his diary films, his portraits of people and places, and his films documenting various forms of art or performance. This installment, on the other hand, showcases the remaining films in Jonas’s filmography, which don’t easily fit into any category. The selection encompasses a small subset of films that constitute film- or video-letters to friends, colleagues, or to the public at large, as well as numerous others that demonstrate Jonas’s restless and ever-inventive openness to new cinematic forms.
Perhaps Jonas Mekas’s cinematic magnum opus, “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” is the filmmaker’s nearly five-hour film which he describes as “a masterpiece of nothing”. Through the film’s twelve chapters, the artist describes his obsession with nothing—or what’s considered nothing, in cinema, in life. An associative, poetic construction of footage shot between 1970 and 1999, the film finds beauty in the disorder of everyday life.
As I Was Moving Ahead… is widely regarded as a masterpiece of documentary film, and it is currently the fourth highest-rated documentary on Letterboxd. This epic diary film is structured into twelve chapters, each introduced by Mekas’s wry and self-reflexive commentary.
Please note: “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” will be screened in two parts with an intermission, Chapters 1-6 (132 minutes) and Chapters 7-12 (152 minutes).
In celebration of the centenary of his birth, the Independent Cinema Office, Lithuanian Cultural Institute and curator Herb Shellenberger present the Jonas Mekas 100! UK Cinema Tour, a series bringing together several of Jonas Mekas’s most-celebrated films alongside lesser-seen works.
Screenings:
“Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania”, 1974
“The 365 Days Project: February 21”, 2007
“Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man”, 2013
“Jonas Mekas Shorts Films & Videos 1966-2017”
“As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty”, 2000
Georgia celebrates the centenary of Jonas Mekas with film program “Portraits from the 20th century” and screenings in two cities – Batumi and Kutaisi. The program shows portraits of different people, artists captured by Jonas Mekas and his self-portraits. Fragments and scenes from life, personal journey and memories are creating a visual archive and poetry of Jonas Mekas’ cinema. In the chosen films we see – echoes of time, culture, history, biographical processes and artistic impulses of concrete authors.
Short films program at Kutaisi International Short Film Festival:
“Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol” (1990), “Salvador Dali at Work” (1964) and “Happy Birthday to John” (1996) will be screened on 27 September at 18:00.
“Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (Fluxus)” (2002) and “Happy Birthday to John” (1996) will be screened on 28 September at 16:00.
The program curated by Lika Glurjidze, Nini Shvelidze.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the famous lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Kino im Sprengel will screen experimental films and documentaries from and about Jonas Mekas.
We will show his long experimental documentary “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” (2000). In a previous screening we shown three short documentaries made by other lithuanian filmmakers about journeys of Jonas Mekas in his native country (in 1976 and 1980), completed by a short documentary of Jonas Mekas himself about his compatriot and Fluxus-artist George Maciunas, “Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (Fluxus)” (1992). This film is shown in 16mm.
Film by Jonas Mekas “Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (Fluxus)” will be screened on 25 November at 20:30.
Film by Jonas Mekas “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” will be screened on 26 November at 18:30.
Association Szmery (“Murmurs”) organises a screening of the film “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” by Jonas Mekas at the Declinated Improvisation (Improwizacja Deklinowana) Festival. The festival is dedicated to the phenomenon of improvisation, which we want to bring to the Warsaw community with the help of interdisciplinary events. In addition to workshops, live soundtracked film screenings, open stages, urban walks or performances, we also wanted to include in the program an attempt to show improvisation in cinema, from the perspective of directing and camera work. We believe that the film work of Jonas Mekas, a prominent Lithuanian experimental director, embodies the concept of improvisation in cinema and the film named above proves it without a doubt.
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the late Jonas Mekas we are happy to present a one-off screening of his landmark 1972 film “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania”, in partnership with the Hyde Park Picture House.
“Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” chronicles the return journey to his homeland with his brother Adolfas, after several decades in the United States. Reuniting with siblings, neighbours and their mother, the film pulls the viewer through village life in rural Soviet Lithuania, bookended by scenes from New York in the 1950s and a stop in Vienna on their return journey to the US. Combining music, poetry and reflections, with short fragmentary bursts of filming, Mekas’ films are alive with memory.
Preceded by a video from Mekas’s “365 Days Project” (2007).
