Jonas Mekas

A first hand account of the life, thoughts & feelings of a Displaced Person. A painful record of one person's experiences in a Nazi Forced Labor camp: five years in Displaced persons camps; & the first years as a young Lithuanian immigrant in New York City. "I was enormously moved by it."--Allen Ginsberg. "I believe in survivors' testimonies."--Elie Wiesel. Reviewed in LIBRARY JOURNAL & BOOK LIST. Publisher: Black Thistle Press, 491 Broadway, NY, NY, 10012.

I Had Nowhere to Go

Selections from the author's column Movie journal published in the Village voice.

The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971

Movie Journal

Richard Foreman

Barbara Rubin

Letters from Barbara Rubin to Jonas Mekas

Film Culture 80

Mano naktys

Trys draugai / Jurgis Mačiūnas, Yoko Ono, John Lennon

A Dance with Fred Astaire covers the 94 years Mekas has spent weaving himself inextricably into the fabric of postwar culture, featuring a dizzying cast of cultural icons both underground and mainstream.

A Dance with Fred Astaire

Algimantas Antanas Naujokaitis

Laiškai iš niekur

Film Culture

A selection of 400 black-and-white photographs taken by Tina Bara between 1983 and 1989 in East Berlin, the old GDR and other travels comprises this artists book. Documentary photographs on a clandestine trip to Russia, forbidden scenes from the VEB Buna chemical plant, and observations of punks and other young rebels are interwoven with intense full-body and portrait photographs of her friends as well as a photographic love story. Combined with texts in the form of subtitles, this poignant body of work captures a cinematic-like quality. Bara also shares her search for feminine identity within the subversive, melancholy rebellion against East Germanys dictatorial system. Her photographs convey the collective need to break out of a monotonous system repressive of individuality and self-will that no longer exist. This visual diary captures a moment right before the collapse of an entire political and ideological system.

Conversations with Filmmakers

I Seem to Live chronicles the beginnings of New York's avant-garde film world and the emergence of a counterculture Jonas Mekas' I Seem to Live picks up in the 1950s, where his extraordinary and popular memoir I Had Nowhere to Go left off. These were crucial years for the artist: Jonas Mekas and his brother Adolfas, having arrived in New York, shot their first experimental films, and Jonas began to develop the essayistic film diary format that he would use to record his day-to-day observations for the rest of his life. In 1954 the two brothers founded Film Culture magazine, and in 1958 Jonas began writing a weekly column for the Village Voice. It was in this period that Mekas' writing, films and unflagging commitment to art began to establish him as a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema and the barometer of the New York art scene. Assembling Mekas' diaries from this exciting period, enriched with his own personal visual material, I Seem to Live offers an intimate, unparalleled view of the postwar New York underground scene from one of its most beloved fixtures. The first installment of Mekas' diaries, I Had Nowhere to Go (1944-1955), was published by Spector Books in 2017. I Seem to Live, the sequel to that work, will appear in two volumes: the present volume, covering the years 1950 to 1968, and a second, forthcoming volume, covering 1969 to 2004. Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) was born in Lithuania and arrived in New York in 1949 via a wartime displaced-persons camp. Cofounder of the Anthology Film Archives, Mekas was a filmmaker, writer, poet, tireless advocate for experimental art and a New York City legend.

I Seem to Live, Diaries (1950-1971)

Scrapbook of the Sixties is a collection of 37 published and unpublished texts by Jonas Mekas, filmmaker and writer.

Writings 1954-2010

Scrapbook of the Sixties

Seem to Live: The New York Diaries, 1950?2011 is Jonas Mekas?s key literary work. The first volume (1950?1969) of this magnum opus appeared posthumously in 2019. It ranks alongside his cinematic oeuvre, which he elaborated together with his brother Adolfas after their arrival in New York in 1949. In the 1950s, Mekas began to shoot his first films, in the process developing an essayistic format that he would use as a diary to record his day-to-day observations. His writing, films, and unflagging commitment to art made him a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema and the barometer of the New York art scene. I Seem to Live: The New York Diaries, 1969?2011, vol. 2, the second and concluding volume of his diaries, contains an extensive index of names as well as a filmography and biography.0Jonas Mekas (1922?2019) was born in Lithuania and arrived in New York in 1949 via post-war DP camps in Germany. Co-founder of the Anthology Film Archives, Mekas was a filmmaker, writer, and poet, as well as a tireless advocate for experimental art and a New York City legend.

The New York Diaries (1969-2011), Volume 2

I Seem to Live

nervuoti dienoraščiai

Žmogus be vietos

Žodžiai ir raidės

John Cage

Stan Brakhage

Stan Vanderbeck

Stan Brakhage, John Cage, Jonas Makas, Stan Vanderbeek

Cinema Now 1

Adeline Coffinier

Victor Gresard

L’histoire de la revue de cinéma Film Culture est unique. Fondée à New York en 1955 par Jonas et Adolfas Mekas, la revue, d’abord orientée vers le cinéma d’auteur, s’impose très vite comme le lieu de débat et d’analyse incontournable de presque tout ce qui compte d’important dans le cinéma expérimental américain. D’abord bimestrielle puis paraissant au gré des aléas financiers, la revue compte au total 79 numéros (dont certains doubles ou triples), de janvier 1955 à l’hiver 1996. Film Culture constitue aujourd’hui un document-source incontournable, mesurant le pouls de l’avant-garde cinématographique, principalement américaine, mais pas seulement, durant deux ou trois décennies. La revue recèle une mine d’informations sur les cinéastes qui créent, les mouvements qui se forment, les idées qui circulent, les films qui sont projetés. Elle accueille aussi les textes des artistes eux-mêmes, qui sont autant de manifestes. Sans parler de l’illustration, parfois dense et très diversifiée, la plupart du temps inédite. Tout ceci dans une maquette originale, qui a fait de certains numéros des exemplaires de collection (de 1956 à 1963, Jonas Mekas confie la maquette de la revue à Georges Maciunas). La publication contient plusieurs index - Index des auteurs, Index des sujets, Index des titres de films et Index des illustrations, - ainsi que la liste complète des sommaires. L’outil de recherche qui est ici proposé est précédé de deux documents rares. Le premier est le compte-rendu d’une discussion à Columbia University en 2001 entre Jonas Mekas, J. Hoberman, Andrew Sarris et P. Adams Sitney. Le deuxième reprend l’Editorial du numéro 14 de novembre 1957, dans lequel Jonas Mekas, le rédacteur en chef de la revue, plaide pour le renouveau d’un cinéma expérimental en Amérique. L’ouvrage inaugure une nouvelle collection de Paris Expérimental, « Outils / Tools », consacrée à des outils de recherche dans l’histoire du cinéma expérimental. Il sort simultanément à l’édition du Catalogue raisonné des films, vidéos et installations de Jonas Mekas (1962-2012).

Jonas Mekas

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