Jonas Mekas Trailers
A Mixtape for Stom TrailerNam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV TrailerPlease Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages Trailer
Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in the farming village of Semeniškiai, Lithuania. In 1944, he and his brother Adolfas were taken by the Nazis to a forced labor camp in Elmshorn, Germany. After the War he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz. At the end of 1949 the UN Refugee Organization brought both brothers to New York City, where they settled down in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Two months after his arrival in New York he borrowed money to buy his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of his life. He soon got deeply involved in the American Avant-Garde film movement. In 1954, together with his brother, he started Film Culture magazine, which soon became the most important film publication in the US. In 1958 he began his legendary Movie Journal column in the Village Voice. In 1962 he founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative, and in 1964 the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde cinema, and a screening venue.
During all this time he continued writing poetry and making films. To this date he has published more than 20 books of prose and poetry, which have been translated into over a dozen languages. His Lithuanian poetry is now part of Lithuanian classic literature and his films can be found in leading museums around the world. He is largely credited for developing the diaristic forms of cinema. Mekas has also been active as an academic, teaching at the New School for Social Research, the International Center for Photography, Cooper Union, New York University, and MIT.
Mekas' film The Brig was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1963. Other films include Walden (1969), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), Lost Lost Lost (1975), Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990), Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992), As I was Moving Ahead I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000), Letter from Greenpoint (2005), Sleepless Nights Stories (2011) and Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man. In 2007, he completed a series of 365 short films released on the internet -- one film every day -- and since then has continued to share new work on his website.
Since 2000, Mekas has expanded his work into the area of film installations, exhibiting at the Serpentine Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), PS1 Contemporary Art Center MoMA, Documenta of Kassel, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Venice Biennale.
Most Popular Jonas Mekas Trailers
Total trailers found: 277
19 May 1967
... with real-life portraits of Jayne Mansfield, Frak O'Hara, Ruth Ford, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Rudy Gernreich, Jonas Mekas and others.
28 November 1965
The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second.
22 October 2016
Alexander Kluge - October 22 2016
11 April 2007
In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist.
01 January 2014
Jonas Mekas films the Halloween festivities at Anthology Film Archives in 1990.
13 October 2013
This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed.
01 January 1989
Documentary on Andy Warhol's cinema of the sixties, made for Channel 4 in association with The Factory, MOMA and the Whitney Museum of Art and in collaboration with Simon Field.
21 September 2010
New York Conversations is a documentary made of varied conversations revolving around cinema in New York.
01 January 1992
A behind-the-scenes look at the man behind the trophy and the poisons that taint an otherwise jubilant jamboree.
01 June 2010
A wholesome moment: Jonas Mekas, MM Serra, Ken Jacobs, and Flo Jacobs take lavender from a stranger's bush.
29 May 2016
A “Cinéma, de notre temps” series episode directed by french filmmaker Jackie Raynal, originally aired 29 May 2016.
01 January 2006
Provides a rare glimpse into the world of George and Mike Kuchar, underground filmmaking brothers from the Bronx.
03 October 1978
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.
03 July 1979
The film is arranged in six chronologically-ordered parts, each filmed in a different location during Oona's third year.
01 January 2009
MM Serra and Jonas Mekas sign a paper in 3D.
25 August 2015
Stephen Smith sets out to discover the real Andy Warhol - in the hour-by-hour detail of his daily life.
09 December 2008
The amazing adventures of forgotten American novelist and Paris Review founder, Harold Louis "Doc" Humes.
01 June 1990
Jonas Mekas’s intimate diary film spans 1963 to 1990, capturing Andy Warhol alongside friends and collaborators from the New York avant-garde.
25 November 1981
Adaptation of an avant-garde play about Rhoda, a hysterical heroine who feels oppressed by the people around her.
01 January 1985
Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.
23 December 1972
A surreal, half-fiction, half real life footage of a day in the life of John lennon and Yoko Ono, composed to music from John's historic 'Imagine' album and Yoko's 'Fly'.
15 October 2021
Experience the iconic rock band's legacy in the first major documentary to tell their story. Directed with the era’s avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews with dazzling archival footage.
24 March 2023
The quixotic journey of Nam June Paik, one of the most famous Asian artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the use of technology as an artistic canvas and prophesied both the fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding that would arise from the interconnected metaverse of today's world.
25 March 2011
Filmmaker José Luis Guerin documents his experience during a year of traveling as a guest of film festivals to present his previous film.
03 July 1991
Quartet Number One (1991) 8 min.
03 September 2021
A unique and compelling account of the day that changed the modern world, captured by ordinary people who chose to pick up their cameras and film that fateful day.
06 September 2013
Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.
06 August 1997
Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996.
05 November 2000
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
15 March 2002
Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s.
06 March 1965
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.
02 August 1972
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.
24 July 2011
Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up as part of the experimental film community.
02 February 1967
Jonas Mekas captures an afternoon in New York as a Hare Krishna group fills the streets with chanting and song.
01 January 2013
In the Kontti gallery, Kiasma presents a selection of Jonas Mekas’ films from the 1970s through to the 1990s.
01 November 2006
In May 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their famous Bed-In For Peace event. It was attended by many of their close friends, including Timothy Leary.
01 November 2006
I made this little film portrait of Dreyer on the 17th of September 1965, in New York. He said he was very interested in what I was trying to do in the possibilities of film portraiture.
01 March 1968
Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols.
20 September 1964
Jonas Mekas’s film captures The Living Theatre’s stage production of The Brig, an unflinching portrait of life inside a U.
08 October 2005
The film icon/Andy Warhol darling is interviewed is his legendary cluttered apartment.
14 January 1966
The Velvet Underground's first public appearance, filmed in Super 8 at a Psychiatrist's Convention, at the Delmonico Hotel, New York, January 14, 1966.
14 September 1976
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.
28 February 1961
Barbara, a young woman consumed by despair, contemplates suicide, while a man she meets in a church and a married couple struggle to persuade her that life is still worth living.
01 November 2006
This is the only filmed record of this historical performance of the pioneering music group. They are shown with Lou Reed, Eddie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, John Cale, Andy Warhol, and others.
12 August 2022
Why are we still able, today, to view images that were captured over 125 years ago? As we enter the digital age, audiovisual heritage seems to be a sure and obvious fact.
15 June 2019
Self Discovery for Social Survival is a collaborative surf and music film produced by Brooklyn based record label, Mexican Summer and Pilgrim Surf + Supply, a New York based surf and outdoor brand.
01 November 2006
This was filmed July 1-4, 1965 in Millbrook, at the estate of Timothy Leary. It is with Baba Ramdass and house guests.
10 December 2005
Co-director Robert Margolis stars as Robert, an actor who may or may not be himself in this intense and often hilarious film about acting, aging and the dark side of ambition.
01 November 2006
Matsuo Basho's haiku are internationally revered for their clarity, brevity and insight. Learn about this great haiku poet.
06 February 2009
A meditation on the time when the world watched as filmmaker Jonas Mekas' home country of Lithuania fought for independence.
01 January 1969
Iimura creates a short self-portrait as well as brief portraits of five of his peers: Brakhage, Vanderbeek, Smith, Mekas and Warhol.
01 January 2002
Bits of Fluxus events and performances, and picnics with friends
31 August 1979
Explores the complex relationship between the spirit, body, and mind. The film is a nightmare with closed eyes because it counts among the most terrible moments of my life, my second exile, which lasted a very long time.
20 September 2025
"A Mixtape for Stom" is an intimate documentary portrait of Japanese experimental filmmaker Stom Sogo (1975–2012), whose frenetic Super-8mm works became emblematic of New York’s underground cinema at the turn of the millennium.
20 April 2006
A look at avant-garde filmmaker Marie Menken.
31 December 2009
Using his trademark flicker method, Ken Jacobs pays homage to the oldest type of color film, Kodachrome (whose production was discontinued in 2009) and to Jonas Mekas, who managed to breathe life into Kodachrome.
31 December 2006
Patti Smith improvises an unfinished song, called "God Running". From the cycle of FIRST FORTY I made in late 2006 as an introduction to my work for my new, Internet audience.
20 December 1978
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011.
08 May 2016
Yoko Ono Lennon's Courage Awards 2016
31 December 2011
I am in Provence near Mt. Ventoux. I remember the poet Petrarca walking on Mt. Ventoux and carrying with him a volume of St.
