On Christmas Eve 1922, in a tiny farming village in north-eastern Lithuania, Jonas Mekas was born. From these humble beginnings, he would emerge as an unlikely yet pivotal figure whose influence on twentieth century art, cinema and culture extended internationally. As the central node of avant-garde film in the United States, he had an inestimable impact on people like Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Shirley Clarke, John Waters and Martin Scorsese, to name just a few. Over his 96 years, Mekas’s long list of his accomplishments—including founding Film Culture magazine, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives—complemented his own achievements as a poet, diarist, artist, organizer and, perhaps most importantly, a filmmaker.

About the Tour

In celebration of the centenary of his birth, the Independent Cinema Office, Lithuanian Cultural Institute and curator Herb Shellenberger present the Jonas Mekas 100! UK Cinema Tour, a series bringing together several of Jonas Mekas’s most-celebrated films alongside lesser-seen works. After pioneering his own poetic and expressive use of the handheld 16mm Bolex—a camera more associated with home movies and amateur filmmakers than with “real cinema”—Mekas would later adopt new consumer video and digital camera technologies, experimenting to develop his own personal technique with each. Across four programmes, this series brings together works made between 1966 and 2017, showing the many different styles and modes of cinema that Mekas worked in. A fifth program contextualises Mekas’s work as a programmer, through showing the work of his friends and co-conspirators whose films he exhibited at Anthology Film Archives.

Jonas Mekas 100! features two landmark works by Mekas: Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1976), which depicts Jonas and his brother Adolfas’s return journey to their homeland after several decades in the United States, and was inducted into the United States National Film Registry in 2006; and a new digital restoration of As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, an epic, 4.5 hour-film that premiered at the 2000 London Film Festival and is currently the fourth highest-rated documentary film on Letterboxd. Alongside these titles, we have worked with RE:VOIR and the Estate of Jonas Mekas to curate a completely original series of Jonas Mekas’s lesser-known films to bring the joy, beauty and sense of wonder integral to his cinema to audiences across the United Kingdom.

Jonas Mekas 100! UK Cinema Tour is curated by Herb Shellenberger. The project is delivered by the Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Independent Cinema Office with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Cultural Attaché in the UK. Special thanks to RE:VOIR (Pip Chodorov), the Estate of Jonas Mekas (Sebastian Mekas) and Julius Ziz for their cooperation.

Booking Terms

The individual programmes of Jonas Mekas films range in price between £105 and £125 each (vs. 35%). A discounted rate of £400 (vs. 35%) is available when booking all four programmes as a package.

Programme Five (The New American Cinema and After) is available on a £144 flat fee.

Click the images below for more programme details and for individual prices.

Available for bookings until 31 January 2023

Screenings

• Hyde Park Picturehouse – 1 September 2022
• HOME – 7 & 15 September 2022
• Tyneside Cinema – 24 September – 24 October 2022
• Cube Cinema – 2 October 2022
• CinemaAttic – 25 & 26 November 2022
• Whitechapel Gallery – 26 November 2022
• Close-Up Film Centre – 2 December – 31 December
• Prince Charles Cinema – 9 January 2023
• Watershed – 22 & 25 January 2023