Jonas Mekas Still from Notes on Marie Menken Courtesy of Mina Film
Jonas Mekas (b. 1922) is one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking or the 'New American Cinema'. He was editor and chief of Film Culture and wrote Movie Journal, a film column for the Village Voice. He is the co-founder of The Filmmakers' Co-operative (FMC) and the Filmmakers' Cinematheque, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. Among films made by Jonas Mekas are Guns of the Trees (1961), The Brig (1963),Walden (1969), Lost, Lost, Lost (1975), Reminiscences of a Voyage to Lithuania (1972), Zefiro torna, (1992) and As I was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2001). Jonas Mekas' films have been screened extensively and he received innumerous grants and awards, among them, New York State Council on the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.