Jonas Mekas
Bio
Born in Lithuania in 1922, Jonas Mekas is a filmmaker, writer, critic, and poet. He survived a World War II labor camp and postwar displacement before immigrating to New York in 1949 to embark upon a career in the arts. His work as an experimental filmmaker is legendary (he’s been referred to as “the godfather of American avant-garde cinema”), and at the age of 94 he continues to work with Anthology Film Archives as an archivist and a historian. Mekas is currently prepping a variety of books for publication, organizing his personal archives, writing poems, and documenting his daily life. His newest book, A Dance with Fred Astaire, is described as a collection of anecdotes and ephemera: “Memories, diary entries, conversations, and insights sit alongside collages of postcards, newspaper cuttings, film negatives, lists, posters and photographs, envelopes and letters, book covers, telegrams, cartoons, and doodles.”