Andy Warhol
Anthology Film Archives
Avant-garde
Category=ATC
Category=ATFB
Category=ATFX
counterculture
culture
Diary Film
Eastern Europe
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Experimental Film
Film
Film Criticism
Film Culture
First Amendment
Flaming Creatures
Freedom of Speech
Jonas Mekas
Lithuania
movies
New American Cinema
New York
poetry
The Brig
The Factory
The Living Theatre
The Village Voice
Walden
Product details
- ISBN 9781496829221
- Weight: 332g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 25 Aug 2020
- Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A refugee from post-World War II Europe who emigrated to the US in 1949, Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) became one of America's foremost champions of independent cinema and one of its most innovative filmmakers. An admired poet in his native Lithuania, Mekas began recording his life on film shortly after his arrival in New York. Through his work as the author of the Village Voice's "Movie Journal" column, editor of Film Culture magazine, and founder of Anthology Film Archives and the Film-Makers' Cooperative, Mekas played a vital role in the promotion of avant-garde and independent films. His early films, Guns of the Trees and The Brig, challenged the structure of traditional narrative filmmaking. He is best known for his "diary films," including Walden (Diaries, Notes, and Sketches); Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania; and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty. His films, writings, and the institutions he built have influenced generations of filmmakers, poets, artists, musicians, critics, and scholars.
In Jonas Mekas: Interviews, volume editor Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker collects eighteen interviews covering almost sixty years of the filmmaker's career. Mekas discusses his remarkable life as a refugee from Nazi- and Soviet-occupied Lithuania, his role as one of the major figures in the development of the American avant-garde, and his thoughts about his own work. In conversation with scholars, journalists, and other prominent artists, Mekas speaks of his passion for artistic expression and uncompromising vision for a liberated cinema. These interviews preserve Mekas's voice so that it might speak to future generations of artists and intellectuals.
Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker is managing editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture. He has edited several books, including the second edition of Jonas Mekas's Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971. He worked closely with Mekas for twenty years.
