Jonas Mekas
Artist Timeline

1922 Born on Christmas Eve in Semeniskiai, Lithuania,

1944 Left Lithuania to attend university in Vienna. En route, his train was stopped in Germany and he and his brother, Adolfas Mekas, were imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn, a suburb of Hamburg, for eight months.

1945 The brothers escaped and were detained near the Danish border where they hid on a farm for two months until the end of the war. After the war, Mekas lived in DP camps in Wiesbaden and Kassel.

Saw John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Chaplin’s The Gold Rush with U.S. Army troops and was fascinated. Later saw the The Search (1948) by Fred Zinnemann, a film about displaced persons. Jonas and Adolfas were upset by what they thought was an extremely inaccurate portrayal. Angered, they began writing scripts of their own and resolved to make them into films as soon as they could acquire a camera.

1946-1948 Studies philosophy at the University of Mainz, Germany.

1948 Brothers want to go to Israel to join the budding film industry. They are unable to gain entry to the country because they are not Jewish. Instead they attempted to go to Egypt in the hopes of walking to Israel, but again their entry was denied.

Semeniskiu Idiles, a book of poetry in Lithuanian is published.

1949 UN Refugee Organization, together with 2000 other refugees, brings the brothers to New York, where they settle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Two weeks later, they borrow money to rent a Bolex 16-mm camera. Jonas carries it around with him everywhere.

1953 He begins screening avant-garde films at Gallery East on Avenue A and Houston, and a Film Forum series at Carl Fisher Auditorium on 57^th Street.

1954 Together with brother Adolfas, he begins “Film Culture” magazine.

1958 Begins writing “Movie Journal” column for Village Voice.

1959 Mekas helps found the New American Cinema Group, created as a new model of distribution and exhibition for independent film.
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1962 Co–founds the Film-Makers’ Cooperative (FMC).

Makes Guns of the Trees, Beat-inspired story of two couples who struggle to make sense of their changing world in the early 1960’s.

Organizes first exhibition of New American Cinema in Spoleto, Italy.

1963 Jack Smith’s film Flaming Creatures is censored and excluded from the Knokke-Le Zoute Third International Experimental Film Festival in Belgium, Mekas resigns as a juror.

1964 Mekas arrested on obscenity charges for showing Flaming Creatures and Jean Genet’s Chant d’amour.

Founds Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, which eventually becomes the Anthology Film Archives.

Launches a campaign against the censorship board, and for the next few years continues to exhibit films at the Film-makers’ Cinemathèque, the Jewish Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art.

Makes The Brig, based on the documentary play about prison brutality in the Marine Corps performed at the Living Theater, receives grand prize at Venice Film Festival.

1964-1967 Organizes the New American Cinema Expositions, which tours Europe and South America.

1966 Receives Guggenheim Fellowship.

1967 Encouraged by Gerald O’Grady to exhibit some of his material at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Edits his first “diary film” Diaries, Notes, and Sketches, a.k.a. Walden.

Joins 80 Wooster Fluxhouse Coop.

1969 Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, and Jerome Hill begin creation of Anthology Film Archives.

1970’s Teaches film courses at the New School for Social Research, MIT, Cooper Union, and New York University.

1970 Anthology Film Archives opens on 425 Lafayette Street as a film museum, screening space, and a library, with Mekas as its director.

1971 Mekas, along with Stan Brakhage, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, James Broughton, and P. Adams Sitney, begin the ambitious Essential Cinema project to establish a canon of important cinematic works.

1971 Makes Reminisces of a Journey to Lithuania.

1974 Marries Hollis Melton.

Anthology Film Archives moves to 80 Wooster Street.

Daughter Oona born.

1976 Edits Lost Lost Lost in which he retraces his first ten years in New York.

1977 Receives Creative Arts Award from Brandeis University.

1978 Completes In Between.

1978 Makes Notes for Jerome, an elegy for his friend and patron of Anthology, Jerome Hill.

1979 Makes Paradise Not Yet Lost (Oona’s Third Year), a letter to his daughter and memoir of the family’s life in New York and travels in Europe.

Acquires from the city of New York the 2^nd Avenue Courthouse building.

1980’s Begins raising money for the building’s renovation into a film museum, which will eventually become the permanent home of Anthology Film Archives.

1981 Son Sebastian born.

1985 Makes He Stands Alone in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life with footage from 1969-1985 including family and friends from the film community.

– Edits short dance films: Cups/Saucers/Dancers/Radio filmed in1965 and Erik Hawkins: Excerpts from Here and Now with Watchers/Lucia Dlugoszewski Performs, and Street Songs (1965/1983).

1987 Begins using video in his work.

1989 Receives Mel Novikoff Award at San Francisco Film Festival.

1990’s Compiles a number of film elegies from older footage: Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990), Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992), Happy Birthday to John (1996),
Birth of a Nation (1997), Song of Avignon (1998); Memories of Frankenstein (1996), a recording of the mid-’60s Living Theater performance of Frankenstein. He completes a film begun by Jerome Hill, Dr. Carl C. Jung or Lapis Philosophorum (1950–91) and in anticipation of a longer film on which he was working, he also makes Quartet Number One (1991). Mekas’ other film projects during this period include Imperfect 3-Image Films (1995) and On My Way to Fujiyama I Met… (1995). The ‘90s also saw the beginning of Mekas’ video work, including The Education of Sebastian or Egypt Regained (1992), (1994), Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997), Letter from Nowhere – Laiskas is Niekur No. 1 (1997), Laboratorium (1999), and two videos of a drumming band Mob of Angels/The Baptism (1991) and Mob of Angels at St. Ann (1992).

1991 I Had Nowhere to Go: Diaries, 1944-1954 is published.

1992 Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Ministry of Culture, France.

Has exhibition at Galerie National de Paume, Paris.

Holds first exhibition at Galerie du jour, Paris.

1995 Receives Lithuanian National Award.

1996 Doctor of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa, Kansas City Art
Institute.

Subject of Special Tribute, New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

Holds exhibition titled Frozen Film Frames at the Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo.

1997 Receives Pier Paolo Pasolini Award in Paris.

Receives International Documentary Film Association Award in Los Angeles.

Receives Governors Award from the Skohegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Artium Doctoris Honoris Causa, Universitatis Vytauti Magni, Lithuania.

1999 Makes This Side of Paradise, a Kennedy family portrait, and Notes on Andy’s Factory.

2000 Makes As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty.

Just Like a Shadow is published.

Makes Mozart & Wien and Elvis, a two minute film commissioned by the Biennale Film Festival that revisits footage taken of Mekas’s mother 27 years earlier.

Participates in the exhibition La Beauté in Avignon, France.

2000 Makes Autobiography of a Man Who Carried His Memory in His Eyes and Remedy for Melancholy.

2001 Makes Ein Maerchen.

1966-2001 Release Mysteries with music by Phil Glass.

2002 Participates in Documenta, Kassel.

Fluxus Friends and Artists Book are published.

2003 In Cannes, France, he exhibits installation work, Dedication to Leger, 24 hours of video presented on 12 monitors.

Holds exhibitions at Musée d’Art Moderne and the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris.

Lettres de Nulle Part and Daybooks are published.

2005 Edits Williamsburg, Brooklyn from footage taken in 1950

2005 Jonas Mekas solo exhibition entitled Fragments of Paradise opens at Maya Stendhal Gallery, New York.

2006 Represents Lithuania at the 51st International Art Exhibition Venice Biennial with the exhibition Celebration of the Small and Personal in the Time of Bigness.

2006 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. invites him to give a lecture in the series entitled “Meet the Artist,” and screens Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania.

2006 The Directors Guild of America awards Anthology Film Archives a DGA Honors recognizing the center’s dedication to preserving the art of cinema.

2006 United States National Film Preservation Board selects Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania to be preserved at the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.

2007 Receives Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s award for his significant contribution to American film culture.

www.jonasmekas.com is launched at Maya Stendhal Gallery featuring his 365-Day Project.

Has solo exhibition entitled The Beauty of Friends Being Together Quartet at P.S.1. Contemporary Art Center, New York.

My Night Life and Anecdotes are published.

Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center is established in Vilnius, Lithuania. Exhibitions will focus on art and film collections by Mekas and his friend, artistic collaborator, and founder of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas.

2008 Receives Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art and becomes a member of the Austrian Committee for Art.

2008 Receives Baltic Cultural Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the field of Arts and Science.

Participates in Experiment Marathon Reykjavik in Iceland.

Participates in Manifesto Marathon event at Serpentine Gallery, London.

Major retrospective for the artist is scheduled to open on November 7, 2008 at Museum Ludwig in Cologne. A second major exhibition will be held for the artist at Serpentine Gallery in 2010.