This correspondence, or exchange of letters and video diaries between acclaimed filmmakers Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerin is extremely potent, there's sorcery at play in the mixture of the two. Together they're light and dark. Mekas knows life's joys, and is always a participant in what he films, Guerín is a detached observer, cold, present only as a black mote, reflected in the eye of one of his subjects. Guerín shoots in black and white and strives for formalism, Mekas loves hazard, loves his chaotic hand-held colour camera. Jonas Mekas felt that his images were inferior to those of Guerín, but a picture of his son Sebastian devouring a pickle, followed by Jonas on the deli sausage and wine, and then a cheeky close up of Goethe's Faust; which of them Faust and which Mephistopheles? That one shot set me thinking about the nature of art and the privilege of artists, and could be interpreted in any one of several fruitful ways. Guerín's Camera is brutal, his viewpoint black, on death and distance. He sends Jonas a morbid video, regarding a Slovenian film writer, which is almost a provocation. One beautiful moment, filmed through a gap in his hotel room's curtains shows a young couple frolicking in the sea, for which brief segment he allows music. It's deliberately voyeuristic though, Guerín is distant he identifies with migrant workers he films in Venice. The films, in an aesthetic sense presents clarity versus confusion, reality versus a dreamer's obfuscation. There's an extent to which what we see is a real correspondence, an extent to which they are talking past one another. Guerín intones that dialogue between filmmakers is an impossibility, over images of fish heads on ice in a market. It's one of two visual quotes I suspected are from Pere Potabella (from Pont de Varsovia). The difference in viewpoint I suspect ultimately is that Mekas sees beauty in the fact that life goes on, wonder in impermanence, Guerín is blanched by it.

Filmed in 1996 in my 491 Broadway loft, this is my manifesto/declaration of the eternal youth of the Cinema.

In the winter of 2003, Legendary Filmmaker Jonas Mekas, moved out of his loft on Broadway, New York, where he had lived for the past 30 years. It was the place where he watched his children grow, and the art scene of Soho become what it was today. It was where Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg used to come by for film events and dinner. This film shows Mekas' transition in to a new life living in Brooklyn, and the adventures this entails. Discovering new friends, singing and dancing with his good friend Benn, and their adventures together. Mekas also faces what it is to live along again in Brooklyn, the place where he first lived when he arrived in New York as a misplaced person in 1947 after ww2. A film of Joy, friendship, wine, and song!

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.

“Raimund Abraham was a visionary architect and a great teacher. Some of those aspects of Raimund you’ll glimpse in this video. But most of the footage is personal, it comes from forty years of our friendship. You’ll see in this video portrait a lot of Raimund. Raimund celebrating, Raimund arguing, Raimund lecturing, Raimund serving his legendary roasts. His dinners were legendary both for food and high drama. And always friends – friends from the old Vienna days, friends from the Cooper Union days, friends, friends. Raimund believed in friendships, he relied on them, and he tested his friendships the hard way. He was a tough friend, but a good friend, always reliable. He was always there for me, when I felt low and needed a late night drink, no matter what hour, he was always there. He was a good friend.” –J.M.

Filmed during a visit to Jerome Hill in Provence, Jonas Mekas sets his Bolex to capture a single day overlooking the port of Cassis. Shot frame by frame from morning to sunset, the film distills shifting light and color into a quiet meditation on time, place, and perception.

Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR de Jonas Mekas États-Unis, 2008, vidéo, 289’, coul., vostf Un journal filmé, une méditation à pa rtir d’images retransmises par la télévision, de 1989 à 1991, au moment de la chute de l’URSS et de la lutte pour l’indépendance de la Lituanie. Des images et des bulletins d’informations que Mekas a quotidiennement enregistrés, donnant à voir de manière chronologique le retour à l’indépendance de son pays d’origine, la Lituanie. « C’est un enregistrement capsule de ce qui s’est passé et de la manière dont ça s’est passé pendant cette période cruciale, telle que les télévisions l’ont enregistrée. Le film peut être vu comme une tragédie grecque dans laquelle les destinées des nations sont bouleversées par la volonté inflexible, quasi irrationnelle d’un seul homme [ici, Vytautas Landsbergis], et où une petite nation déterminée à reconquérir sa liberté, aidée par Olympe, lutte contre une grande puissance, contre l’Impossible. » Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas captures an afternoon in New York as a Hare Krishna group fills the streets with chanting and song. Filmed with his characteristic freewheeling style and later incorporated into Walden, the short stands as an impressionistic sketch of spiritual fervor and Mekas’s participatory approach to cinema.

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. Written by Jim Beaver <[email protected]>

Notes on an American Film Director at Work: Martin Scorsese de Jonas Mekas États-Unis, 2005, vidéo, 80’, coul., vostf Jonas Mekas filme Martin Scorsese sur le tournage des Infiltrés. « J’ai rencontré Martin Scorsese quand il était encore un étudiant en cinéma à l’université de New York. Il venait à mes projections. Mais notre amitié a commencé quand il a fait son premier long métrage, Who’s That Knocking at My Door ? Mon frère Adolfas, Shirley Clarke et moi, on a rejoint Marty pour une émission radio de deux heures pour lancer son film. Nous avons passé un très bon moment. J’ai toujours la cassette. On m’a demandé de faire un film de dix minutes sur Marty pour introduire sa rétrospective au Centre Pompidou en 2005. À ce moment-là, Marty était en train de tourner Les Infiltrés. Je lui ai demandé si je pouvais le suivre une semaine ou deux, et il a accepté. C’est ainsi que le film s’est fait. Sebastian, mon fils, m'a rejoint avec une seconde caméra. J’ai fait une version courte, puis une plus longue. Comme j'étais très occupé par d’autres projets, j’ai demandé à Benn Northover, l’un de mes amis, de m'aider à le monter – j’avais quinze heures de rushes – et nous nous sommes beaucoup amusés parce que nous aimons tous Marty. C’est un film de chambre, un hommage personnel à un ami. » Jonas Mekas

A new cinematic artwork set to Verdi's score by late, beloved filmmaker Jonas Mekas, and co-commissioned by The Shed and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, will accompany the concert performances of Requiem and will be screened in the Level 4 Gallery. The work is a meditative tribute to Verdi's masterpiece and an homage to the filmmaker himself, who passed away in January at the age of 96.

A depressed woman, Barbara, is on the verge of suicide while a man she meets in a church and a married couple try to convince her that life is worth living.

Jonas Mekas reflects on summers spent in the late 1960s and early 1970s with Jackie Kennedy, her sister Lee Radziwill, and their families. Blending personal footage with diary narration, the film captures intimate moments of friendship, cinema, and healing in the years following John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

One hundred and sixty portraits or rather appearances, sketches and glimpses of avant-garde, independent filmmakers and film activists between 1955 and 1996. Why BIRTH OF A NATION? Because the film independents IS a nation in itself. We are surrounded by commercial cinema Nation same way as the indigenous people of the United States or of any other country are surrounded by Ruling Powers. We are the invisible, but essential nation of cinema. We are Cinema.

This intimate portrait of Andy Warhol pulls together a unique library of material shot by New York film legend Jonas Mekas. Spanning from 1963 to 1990, the film features a cast of counterculture icons including Allen Ginsberg, George Maciunas, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono, as well as John and Caroline Kennedy, and Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy Onassis's sister and Warhol muse)—to whom Mekas dedicates the film. The film features footage from the Velvet Underground's first public performance. A portrait of the remarkable life of arguable the twentieth century's most famous artist and leading iconographer.

Jonas Mekas reflects on a 1966 trip to Avignon that offered solace during a period of personal crisis. Combining diary texts read by Angus MacLise with images of place and memory, the film becomes a lyrical meditation on pain, survival, and the restorative power of reflection.

2011年3月11日の東日本大震災を受け、河瀬直美監督が世界の映像作家に呼びかけて実現した短編集。ビクトル・エリセ（スペイン）、ポン・ジュノ（韓国）、ジャ・ジャンクー（中国）、アピチャッポン・ウィーラセタクン（タイ）、パティ・スミス＆スティーブン・セブリング（アメリカ）、桃井かおり（日本）ら21人の監督が「A Sense of Home（家という感覚）」をテーマにそれぞれ3分11秒の短編を手がけ、家族や故郷、祖国への思いをつづっていく。 監督： アリエル・ロッター、イサキ・ラクエスタ、アピチャッポン・ウィーラセタクン、ジャ・ジャンクー、カトリーヌ・カドゥ、桃井かおり、百々俊二、ジョナス・メカス、想田和弘、チャオ・イエ、西中拓史、ウィスット・ポンニミット、レスリー・キー、ポン・ジュノ、ソー・ヨン・キム、山崎都世子、モハメド・ナジブ・ラザク、ペドロ・ゴンザレス・ルビオ、パティ・スミス、スティーブン・セブリング、ビクトル・エリセ、河瀬直美

In 2007, Mekas took his filmmaking online, using his website Jonasmekas.com as the platform for a project called 365 Films, posting a new video each day for the entire year. Intended for "eye-pods" (as his May 31 entry puts it), many of these tidbits are created from now-archival film and video diaries years or decades old, while some employ content shot only days prior to posting. (...) Each daily dose is under 10 minutes (app. 30 hours in total), and their effect is collective; a years' worth of these forms a digital approximation of the monumental quality of his long-form films.

Jonas Mekas invites viewers on a tour through his nightlife, bringing together twenty-five stories of life, love and friendship. Jonas Mekas' opening confession that he suffers from insomnia will come as no surprise to anyone aware of his singular contribution to cinema. Over 50 years he has established and promoted a viable culture for truly independent and avant-garde filmmaking, and his recent acceptance by the art world has brought a long overdue wave of attention and success. Sleepless Nights Stories is the latest in the series of long-form diary films that Mekas has been making since his arrival in the USA in 1949. Eating, drinking, singing and dancing with friends, the tireless octogenarian is full of life and wonder, casually weaving together contemporary folk tales collected during travels across the globe. Marina Abramovic fantasises about domesticity, Lee Stringer recounts an episode from his crack-addicted past, and the protagonist toasts the 'working class voice' of Amy Winehouse. Treating significant and inconsequential moments with equal import, Mekas' modern-day saga presents the first episodes from his ambitious '1001 Nights' project. Mark Webber