“I Had Nowhere to Go”: Jonas Mekas’ America

Artwork by Sandra Engardt

Leo Glavina looks at the building blocks of filmmaker Jonas Mekas’ career.

Commonly referred to as the “godfather of American underground cinema,” the influence of New York based Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) can be felt on a global scale, in both narrative and documentary filmmaking. A key figure of the New York art world from the 1950s onward, Mekas films chronicle not only his life and that of his affiliate artists, but also stand as a testament of one of the most distinct cinematic languages, a voice grown from a life of constant rebellion and a yearning for home.

Born in 1922 in the village of Semeniškiai, Lithuania, Mekas grew up in poor conditions, at a time when “nothing happened,” as he described it. When he was 18, however, the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania and Mekas began to write for underground resistance publications, a task he resumed after Nazi Germany had taken over the country.

In 1944, he fled Lithuania together with his younger brother Adolfas, fearing persecution for their activities in the resistance. Originally bound for Vienna, their train was redirected to Hamburg by the Nazis, where they ended up in a labour camp. After the end of the war, they were first sheltered in various displaced persons camps, before going on to study at the University of Mainz, a return to Lithuania impossible due to renewed Soviet occupation. Having been denied entry to Canada and Israel, they were ultimately shipped off to the United States in 1949 on the promise of work in Chicago. Upon arriving in New York City, however, the brothers decided to stay and settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, moving to Manhattan two years later.

Having spent a large part of their twenties in various DP-camps with little to do but read and write, they dedicated their first few years in New York to soaking up whatever culture they could find, “like a sponge” as Mekas would often say. Similarly, it was only two weeks after their arrival that they first rented a Bolex camera and began to record their everyday surroundings, a practice that would define Mekas’ distinct cinematic language over the course of his career. Furthermore, it was at this time that they first saw the works of experimental filmmakers such as Hans Richter, Maya Deren, and Kenneth Anger, artists with whom they would come to make up the core of twentieth-century American underground cinema. Soon after, the Mekas brothers founded their own film society, then a film magazine called Film Culture (1954) – now considered the American response to the French Cahiers du Cinéma – and in 1958 Jonas became the first ever film columnist for the Village Voice, a position he would hold until 1971, using it primarily to champion independent cinema.

Attempts at more serious filmmaking soon followed: his first two narrative features consist of 1961’s Guns of the Trees, a document of Beat culture, considered to be his most dramatic work, as well as 1964’s The Brig, a collaboration with The Living Theatre, whose rawness and authenticity earned it the documentary prize at that year’s Venice film festival, paradoxically. After these two films, however, Mekas began to distance himself from narrative cinema, instead embracing the distinct documentary style that would make up most of his later work, first exemplified in 1968’s Walden (or Diaries, Notes, and Sketches) a three-hour-long film diary constructed from footage of his everyday life. Apart from Walden, his most notable films in this vein are Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), shot during his first visit to Lithuania after an almost 20 year-long absence; Lost, Lost, Lost (1976), a film diary spanning the years from his arrival in New York until 1963; and the five-hour-long As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses Of Beauty (2000), an attempt to reconstruct parts of his life through a composition of home movies. In contrast to many of the artists whose creative drive originated from the hardships of World War II, Mekas’ work exemplifies not only his highly positive attitude, but also the refuge he found in cinema, the solace of a man displaced for all his life.

With that being said, film was not Mekas’ only means of expression. A bookworm from an early age, he published over 20 books of his prose and poetry during his lifetime, as well as his diaries. Along with the aforementioned works, these written diaries trace his first steps in New York, his many involvements in film societies, the founding of Anthology Film Archives (a centre for the preservation and exhibition of avant-garde films), as well as conversations with numerous artists affiliated to his work in one way or another. Reading up on Mekas’ life in New York during the 1960s alone offers countless vignettes that help give context to that particular period: for instance, the time Harold Pinter helped him smuggle Jean Genet’s infamous 1950 film Un chant d’amour past U.S. customs, as well as Mekas’ subsequent arrest for screening it at several New York venues in 1964. Moreover, he introduced Andy Warhol first to underground film, then to Lou Reed, and maintained a friendship with both Jackie Kennedy, teaching her children to operate a film camera, as well as Yoko Ono and John Lennon, drinking espresso with them the night they moved to New York City in 1971.

Towards the end of his life, Mekas might have seemed less active due to his age, but was nevertheless chasing projects, giving talks, and putting on one exhibition after another, maintaining the same care and affection that marked his work in cinema. He also continued to voice his opinions on the art world as he did during his time as a film critic, though always keeping his positive attitude and distinct Lithuanian accent. In one of the last interviews before his death, for example, he mentioned his idea of the “shadow line”, a term inspired by the eponymous Joseph Conrad novella. According to Mekas, today’s art world is largely in a state of retrospection and constant respect for what has come before, that is, we are still “after the shadow line”. What Mekas was looking for, thence, was another cultural explosion, another break in art with a similar impact as that of the 60s. Whether such a turn of comparable severity and concentration can still take place in western society, however, is questionable, a world so inundated with information and distractions, our goal often just some peace of mind before anything else.

This article was originally published in Issue 725 of Pi Magazine.