On occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the seminal American-Lithuanian filmmaker and poet, Jonas Mekas, the 12th AAGFF, presents a selection of his most influential experimental films. During World War II, Mekas fled Lithuania with his brother but was taken captive and prisoner at a forced-labor camp in Germany. After managing to escape, he eventually settled in New York. During the 50s and 60s he pioneered the so-called “diary films”, whilst innovating the promulgation of avant-garde cinematic culture—establishing film magazines, collectives and experimental film archives, culminating in the foundation of the Anthology Film Archives.

In Guns of the trees (1962), in the spirit of the political counter-culture of the post-war underground American art scene, and on occasion of a real-life suicide, Mekas weaves a tapestry of poetic images, in an attempt to exorcise despair itself, and seize the poetic essence of life. Mekas’s diary films should never be taken at face value, as purely personal films. His camera would operate as an extension of his physical body and his perception of his environment and faces, as he sought to take root in his new homeland. In Walden (1969), fragments of daily reality, instantly become transfigured into cinematic and poetic images—as Mekas finds solace for his uprooting in the faces of his artist friends. Much more, so, in his diary films, Reminiscences of a journey to Lithuania (1972) and Lost, lost, lost (1976), Mekas deals with his audiovisual memoirs as a person uprooted and wrestling with painful memories: the despair of exile, the nostalgia for home, homeland and childhood—but always, returning to the invaluable bonds of friendship. The diary film and its inherently personal gaze, was the way in which Mekas penetrated reality indirectly and poetically— with light, rhythm and the motion of images.

He remained true to his artistic form till the very end. Actually, he even carried a small camcorder with him everywhere he went and would upload his diary videos online. In his later films, As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty (2000) and Outtakes from the life of a happy man (2012), he presented us with images of a happy Sisyphus.

Film selection, programming: Jacob Skenderidis
Introduction: Ioulia Mermigka