Jonas Mekas

"My film diaries 1970-1979: my marriage, children are born, you see them growing up. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty, trips to France, Italy, Spain, Austria. Seasons of the year as they pass through New York. Friends, home life, nature, unending search for moments of beauty and celebration of life friendships, feelings, brief moments of happiness. The film is also my love poem to New York. It's the ultimate Dogme movie, before the birth of Dogme." -Jonas Mekas

A ultra-realistic depiction of life in a Marine Corps brig (or jail) at a camp in Japan in 1957. Marine prisoners are awakened and put through work details for the course of a single day, submitting in the course of it to extremely harsh and shocking physical and mental degradation and abuse. (imdb)

Avant-Garde documentary about Lithuania.

The life and work of Fluxus artist George Maciunas as seen in clips filmed between 1952 and 1978. (imdb)

A film diary containing material from years 1964 to 1968.

Behind the scenes footage of John Lennon recording Imagine

A 12-minute-long experimental documentary on the circus.

Mekas' film diary about his postwar arrival in America.

The film follows Legendary Filmmaker Jonas Mekas, as he sets up a new life in Brooklyn, after living for the past 30 years in the center of Manhattens art scene. Mekas quit his overstuffed Broadway home for Greenpoint Brooklyn. (imdb)

For two hours (or more) we stroll with Jonas Mekas through New York nights, through apartments, studios, backstage rooms, galleries, bars and clubs. We meet old acquaintances like Ken and Flo Jacobs, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Carolee Schneemann, Marina Abramovic, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pip Chodorov, friends, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and we also make many new acquaintances. (mubi.com)

Jonas Mekas wrote, produced, directed, and photographed this arty experimental study of the beatnik movement in America. A bleak portrait of modern existentialism and despair, Guns of the Trees tells the story of young Barbara (Francis Stillman), who is desperately trying to find some value in her life but is weighed down by depression. (John Voorhees, All Movie Guide)

This is a video record of the Allen Ginsberg's death and funeral in his apartment in New York. (imdb)

For this piece, Mekas accumulated footage from several of his films-finished and unfinished-from the past few decades. Mekas lived in SoHo for a long time, and the towers naturally kept popping up: when he would film his friends on the street, hippie happenings on rooftops, family outings to the waterfront. (filmaffinity.com)

In 1974, Mekas married Hollis Melton. Their daughter, Oona, was born the same year. He made Paradise Not Yet Lost in 1979 with footage shot in 1977. The film is arranged in six chronologically-ordered parts, each filmed in a different location during Oona's third year. The film is constructed as a letter to Oona, "to serve her, some day, as a distant reminder of how the world around her looked during the third year of her life. (Mubi)

A correspondence, or exchange of letters and video diaries, between acclaimed filmmakers Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerin. (anonymous)

In Hare Krishna, the people and the glimpses of the streets are somehow familiar. Mekas anchors the viewers' experience in reality by having these visually familiar, quotidian images, which become disorienting with the fragmented visual language. The chanting that holds the visuals together becomes destabilizing, as it does not belong to what the viewer is seeing on the screen; actually, nothing can be the diegetic to the moving images. (ubu.com)

In the film diaries from 1969-84, Mekas continues in the style of Walden (1969), but his attention shifts from the avant-garde film community to the friendships and intersections of a wider social circle. (BFI)

A portrait of Dr. Carl Jung at work in his yard filmed by Jerome Hill in 1950 and edited by Jonas Mekas in 1991.

An avant-garde diary film taking a fragmented, philosophical overview of much of director Jonas Mekas' daily life.

Reflections on my 1966 trip to Avignon that helped me to survive a deep crisis I was going through. Texts from my diaries of that period on the soundtrack are ready by Angus McLise. (Jonas Mekas)

The film doesn't have much to do with the form of what's known as Quartet. In 1991 I was despairing with the amount of unedited diaristic material that I had. I was searching for ways of dealing with it. This film is a result of my searching. (Jonas Mekas)

This is footage of Elvis Presley's last performance in New York on June 9th, 1972. (MUBI)

"On July 19, 1944, my brother Adolfas and I boarded a train that was to take us to Vienna. Instead, we ended up in a forced labor camp near Hamburg. In 1971, the Soviets permitted me to visit my mother in Lithuania. After visiting her, I decided to travel to Vienna. It was a very important moment in my life when I finally arrived in Vienna. During this journey in August 1971, I shot this footage." (Jonas Mekas)

In 1964 Film Culture magazine chose Andy Warhol for its annual Independent Film award. The plan was to show some of Andy's films and have Andy come on stage and hand him the award. Andy said, no, he didn't want a public presentation. So I decided to hand him the award at the Factory, film the occasion, and show the film at the Award Presentation show at the New Yorker Theater. (Jonas Mekas)

An oblique documentary about the LSD group experiments of Timothy Leary, with offscreen commentary of a participant and shots of Leary's house and the surroundings. (anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com.br)

One day of the Cassis port filmed in one shot. (imdb)

A record of Jonas Mekas trip to Italy.

A record of a trip Jonas Mekas made in Assisi.

A record of a trip Jonas Mekas made in Avila.

A record of a trip Jonas Mekas made in Moskow.

A record of a trip Jonas Mekas made in Stockholm.

A spoof interview with War Minister of Lapland concerning war in Vietnam. A few practical suggestions are given, among them a suggestion to turn the conduction of war over to the mafia. The Minister is played by Adolfas Mekas. (mubi)

Footage from three distinct visits to the home of Jerome HILL make up this tribute to him. Mekas visited Hill in 1966 with P. Adams Sitney. He then returned briefly in 1967 and again after Hill's death in 1974. This elegy is dedicated to Hill, who may have felt as much an exile as Mekas did. Music performed by Hill, Taylor Mead, Charles Rydell and others makes up the soundtrack. (SM)

Filmed in 1964-1968. Edited in 1978. The material for this film is footage that didn't find a place in the WALDEN reels. Some of it begins in between LOST, LOST, LOST and WALDEN. It's mostly New York, and some travel footage. (Jonas Mekas)

This extraordinary diary by Jonas Mekas chronicles Warhol's everyday life and work, and the social and cultural milieu that swirled around him. The film includes footage from the first public performance of the Velvet Underground at Delmonico's Hotel on January 13, 1966. Tracing an arc that veers from frenetic to reflective, the film opens with a segment taped at the Dom with Nico, and concludes with the Mass for Warhol at St. Patrick's Cathedral. (SM)

A series 'imperfect' three image films from my new film diaries. (Jonas Mekas)

On October 9th, 1972 an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono's art, designed by the Master of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art, curated by David Ross, presently Director of Whitney Museum, in New York. On the same day an unusual group of John's and Yoko's friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Krasner, and many others, gathered to celebrate John's birthday. This film is an visual and audio record of that event. (Kurzfilmtage - international short film festival Oberhausen)

....The time was still very close to the untimely, tragic death of John F. Kennedy. Jackie wanted to give something to her children to do, to help to ease the transition, life without a father. These were summers of happiness, joy and continuous celebrations of life and friendships. These were days of Little Fragments of Paradise. (Jonas Mekas)

In 1963-64 Salvador Dali did a series of "Happenings" events in a New York. In all cases Peter Beard acted for Dali as both "production manager" and "casting director". The stars of the events in this film are Werushka and Taylor Mead. (jonasmekas.com)

A pocket-sized city symphony, WILLIAMSBURG collects some of the first images Jonas Mekas shot with a film camera in 1950 (along with footage from 1972 when he was returning to his old neighborhood as a visitor). Bygone Brooklyn is richly evoked in the everyday life of the street: the elevated train, Lithuanian storefronts and especially in the faces of children surprised to encounter this man with a movie camera. - Max Goldberg (Fandor)

Jonas Mekas reflects on his life. (MUBI)

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas follows his friend Martin Scorsese and his cast and crew through various locations during the shooting of his film The Departed, released in 2006. (imdb)

A short based around Robert A Haller’s wedding.