For Immediate Release –

Maya Stendhal Gallery is pleased to announce that the exhibition “Jonas Mekas: Fragments of Paradise” has been extended by popular demand until 14 May, 2005, including a sneak preview of a brand-new video by young French filmmaker Virginie Marchand and Jonas Mekas, slated to premiere at this year’s 5th Annual Bicycle Film Festival. Jonas Mekas, a filmmaker, curator, writer, poet, and the founder/director of Anthology Film Archives, will represent Lithuania in the Artists’ Division at the 51st International Art Exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale. That Mekas will be exhibiting within the Artists’ Division, with four rooms consecrated to the exhibition of his film and video work, is a significant achievement for a filmmaker. In addition, Mekas’s multichannel LCD screen installations with film projection, currently on view in the main space at Maya Stendhal Gallery, will be faithfully reproduced in the Lithuania Pavilion. An opening reception will take place on June 9th at the Ludoteca Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Venice. For further information, please contact the gallery.

Just added to the exhibition at Maya Stendhal Gallery is a new video by Virginie Marchand and Jonas Mekas, “I killed myself all night long, Jonas please lend me a bicycle to become famous” (29 min, 2005). The madcap film features Mekas in the role of The Prince. Five films by Marchand, programmed under the title “Faith”, will open at Anthology Film Archives this November. Never before seen footage of Andy Warhol, Peter Beard, and other major personalities associated with the Pop Art movement, has been integrated into the current exhibition in the form of new 16mm short films. Also on view are the two video premieres “A Letter from Greenpoint” (78 min., 2004) and “For Maya: Father and Daughter” (4.5 min., 2005), dedicated to curator and director Maya Stendhal. He will also show “Elvis”, (1 min., 2001), which incorporates footage from Elvis Presley’s last concert in New York; “Wien & Mozart” (1 min., 2001), “Happy Birthday to John”, an homage to John Lennon (24 min, 1996); “Cassis” (4 min., 1966), which condenses an idyllic three hour sunset into four minutes of film; “Notes on the Circus” (12 min., 1966); “Travels”, five short travelogues from Italy, Russia, and Sweden (7 min., 1970) and the rarely-seen self-portrait “Lonesome Day” by Benn Northover (4 min., 2003), in which Jonas clowns around his studio to the Bruce Springsteen song of the same title.

In the Lithuania Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale (12 June-6 November 2005), Jonas Mekas will screen “Diaries, Notes & Sketches, a.k.a. Walden”, “Lost, Lost, Lost”, “He Stands In A Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life”, “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania”, “As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty”, “A Letter from Greenpoint”, a biographical quartet comprising “Zefiro Torna, or, Scenes From The Life Of George Maciunas”, “Happy Birthday to John”, “This Side of Paradise”, “Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol”, and a twelve-monitor video installation.

Jonas Mekas was born in Semeniskiai, Lithuania, in 1922. He lives and works in New York. After being imprisoned by the Nazis in a forced-labor camp, Mekas spent four years in a post-war displaced-persons camp in Germany. Mekas studied philosophy at the University of Mainz from 1946-48, and then emigrated with his brother to the United States, settling in Williamsburg. Mekas discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel’s Cinema 16, and started his own screenings at Gallery East in 1953. In 1954 he became Editor-in-Chief of Film Culture magazine, and in 1958 he began his groundbreaking “Movie Journal” column in The Village Voice. In 1962, Mekas founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative (FMC) and the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in 1964. The latter eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest repositories of avant-garde film, which Mekas continues to direct. Mekas’s film output includes narrative (“Guns of the Trees”, 1961), documentary (“The Brig”, 1963) and diaries (“Walden”, 1969; “Lost, Lost, Lost”, 1975; “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania”, 1972; “Zefiro Torna”, 1992; and “As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty”, 2001.) In addition to his prolific output in film, Jonas Mekas has published twenty-four volumes of poetry, essays, interviews, and diaries, and has been the subject of several book-length studies. His films have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and many others.

For further information, please contact the gallery.

MAYA I STENDHAL I GALLERY 545 West 20th St New York 10011 212.366.1549 www.mayastendhalgallery.com