Film di Jonas Mekas

Fragments of Paradise

眩暈 Vertigo

The Velvet Underground

L'eredità di una rock band iconica torna a splendere nel primo, caleidoscopico documentario che ne celebra la storia. Diretto da Todd Haynes con lo spirito avanguardistico dell'epoca, il film combina interviste esclusive e strabilianti immagini d'archivio.

Tapes

Beyond the Bolex

George

Nitsch

EXPRMNTL

Últimas correspondencias

Filmstudio, mon amour

Proiezioni e dibattiti erano il cuore pulsante del Filmstudio, storico cineclub romano aperto nel 1967 da Americo Sbardella e Annabella Miscuglio e attivo ancora oggi. Toni D'Angelo, a cui è stato messo a disposizione l'archivio di questo monumento alla cinematografia mondiale, si è lasciato andare a un viaggio personale e introspettivo, in cui ha trattenuto ciò che lo ha maggiormente impressionato coadiuvandolo con interviste agli autori che hanno vissuto il Filmstudio.

A Day in the Life of Andy Warhol

My Birthday

Maya Deren, Take Zero

3.11 A Sense of Home Films

Correspondencia Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin

New York Conversations

Guest

Visionaries

No. 18: Mahagonny

Harry Smith’s final film; an epic four-screen projection. Smith worked on this cinematic transformation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) for over ten years and considered it his magnum opus. The film was shot from 1970 to 1972 and edited for the next eight years. The “program” of the film is meticulous, with a complex structure and order. The Weill opera is transformed into a numerological and symbolic system. Images in the film are divided into categories— portraits, animation, symbols and nature— to form the palindrome P.A.S.A.N.A.S.A.P. The film contains invaluable cameos of important avant-garde figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Jonas Mekas, intercut with installation pieces from Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio, New York City landmarks of the era, and Smith’s visionary animation.

Self-Portrait

Jonas Mekas reflects on his life.

J. Mekas

In 1977, Robertas Verba followed Jonas Mekas in Lithuania, his second trip there after he left the country in 1944.

Paradise Not Yet Lost

The film is arranged in six chronologically-ordered parts, each filmed in a different location during Oona's third year.

Four Shadows

Four four-minute image sections and four four-minute sound sections are linked in all combinations of the sound sections with each of the image sections. This established affinities between each of the image sections to the others, and the sound sections to each other. The image sections are: surveyors measuring the land near my house as seen through an old window, a family of Siamang Gibbon apes in the Washington zoo, an industrial site, and a page turned from a book on Cézanne’s composition showing a diagram of his painting Mardi Gras, filmed against bright leaves. The sound sections are: a dramatic scene from Debussy’s opera “Pelléas et Mélisande”, a passage from William Wordworth’s autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” sounds from rowing on a lake at night, and the sounds of the apes vocalizing.

Notes for Jerome

During the summer of 1966 Jonas Mekas spent two months in Cassis, as a guest of Jerome Hill. Mekas visited him briefly again in 1967, with P. Adams Sitney. The footage of this film comes from those two visits. Later, after Jerome died, Mekas visited his Cassis home in 1974. Footage of that visit constitutes the epilogue of the film. Other people appear in the film, all friends of Jerome.

Lost, Lost, Lost

Drawn from footage shot between 1949 and 1963, Jonas Mekas’s autobiographical diary film chronicles his early years in exile, capturing the struggle to build a new life in New York and his gradual discovery of a vibrant artistic community.

Cartoline dall'America

After the author’s period of experimentation, these American notes are extremely straightforward. As in Migration, however, this America could be a more remote country, and the inspiration is avowedly Japanese (Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North). Implicitly, the film-maker compares himself to an old peddler of drawings, Sam, hawking his wares at the entrance of Columbia’s Butler Library.

‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen

Various unrelated vignettes, often juxtaposing sound and image.

Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”

During the 1970s I shot, helped to make, or commissioned about ten document films, mainly about film-makers. This film is one of them. It was made with Dan Ochiva, who acted as cameraman on about half of the footage. I shot the rest, and then edited the film. It is a record of a conference held at the State University of New York at Buffalo on March 22-25, 1973. Among the participants filmed were Gerald O'Grady (who organized the conference), Will Hindle, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Robert Creeley, Bruce Baillie, Scott Bartlett, Hollis Frampton, Ken Jacobs, Ed Pincus, Stan Vanderbeek, Ed Emshwiller, Sally Dixon, James Cox. This footage will eventually become part of my film PEOPLE, PLACES, THE 1970S. –R. H.

Going Home

A home movie by Adolfas Mekas and wife Pola Chapelle on their travels to Lithuania and Europe. It was filmed concurrently with the more highly regarded “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” by Jonas Mekas, brother to Adolfas.

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania

Jonas Mekas weaves an elegiac diary film from his 1971–72 return to Lithuania, chronicling a visit to his birthplace of Semeniškiai after decades in exile. Blending personal memory with documentary observation, the film becomes both a portrait of homecoming and a meditation on displacement, family, and the passage of time.

Ricky Leacock Visit, April 15, 1971

Jonas Mekas visit. Harry comes by before Ricky visit. 1. 12 p.m. April 15th -- Jonas dares to come by but won't talk. I tape him not with set up -- (as I planned) but with camera in my arms I sneak a few shots. 2. Ricky visit RED 1.

Journey to Lithuania

During the trip back to Lithuania, Jonas Mekas made Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, Adolfas Mekas made Going Home, while Pola Chapelle, Adolfas’ wife, made this Journey to Lithuania, which both Jonas and Adolfas said was the best of these three films.

Occhio privato sul nuovo mondo

A film by Alfredo Leonardi.

Filmmakers

Iimura creates a short self-portrait as well as brief portraits of five of his peers: Brakhage, Vanderbeek, Smith, Mekas and Warhol. In each portrait, Iimura attempts to copy the styles and traits of each artist (Vanderbeek's constantly moving camera; Mekas' experiments with film speed; Warhol's use of flashes of white against a black background), while briefly commenting on the images being shown. The film serves effectively as an introduction to the film styles of these artists.

A Matter of Baobab

International Cast of Actors: Jonas Mekas, from Lithuania, poet and film-maker; Louis Brigante, from Madagascar, poet and publisher; Storm De Hirsch, from Holland, poetess, seer and film-maker; Pola Chapelle, from Tierra del Fuego, singer and motel operator; Adolfas Mekas, from Lapland, basket weaver and film director; Contessa Angela Maria Andrecci di Castiglione, from Italy, opera singer.

Underground New York

A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixities, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever. A German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties revolution in art, music, poetry and film and interviews the main players in the “New American Cinema,” that was born on the streets of New York. Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval in all of the arts and growing political agitation against the Vietnam War, Bachman interviews the most prominent figures in “underground film,” including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers and Bruce Connor, and visits the most notorious location in the New York art world of the era - Andy Warhol’s Factory - to conduct an interview with the genius of Pop Art himself.

Jonas

A verité portrait of Jonas Mekas making his daily rounds, JONAS shows us the underground impresario attending a peace rally, filming in Central Park, typing up notes at the Village Voice and projecting his latest rushes at the Film-Makers' Cooperative. A true New Yorker, Mekas seems to be everywhere at once, always with a Bolex camera slung over his shoulder. In detailing these routines, director Gideon Bachmann comes away with a striking time capsule of a city bent on art.

The Song of Avila

Filmed during Jonas Mekas’s visit to Avila in 1967, this short records his impressions of the city, inspired by Meher Baba’s teaching that it was one of Europe’s holy places. The footage was later incorporated into his 2003 compilation film Travel Songs (1967–1981).

Screen Test [ST211]: Jonas Mekas

Screen test for Andy Warhol, 1966

Shooting Guns

Shot in 1960 on the set of Jonas Mekas' 'Guns of the Trees'. Dedicated to Ron Rice.

Jonas in the Brig

A newsreel of Jonas Mekas shooting his filmed version of The Brig on the set of the Living Theatre production.

Empire

Filmed by Jonas Mekas from the 44th floor of the Time-Life Building, “Empire” explores the passage of time without the use of characters or a traditional narrative. The film, that consists of one stationary shot of the Empire State Building, was made from standard 1,200-foot rolls of 16mm film with a more than eight-hour runtime.

Award Presentation to Andy Warhol

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.

Diane the Zebra Woman

Diane the Zebra Woman follows four women’s misadventures through the streets of New York City in 1962. All played by Flame Schon, the characters consist of The Detective, The Mother, The Child, and the Medium. Evocative of the scene from which it emerged, the film features cameos from integral figures like William Levy, Jonas Mekas, Paul Morrissey and features an original score composed by Malcolm Goldstein.