Jonas Mekas, legendary underground film, Dead at 96 – Rolling Stone

Famed filmmaker and experimental film critic Jonas Mekas, who has influenced artists ranging from Andy Warhol to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, died Wednesday at the age of 96.

The Anthology Film Archives, founded by Mekas in 1970, confirmed Wednesday on Instagram: "Dear friends, Jonah died peacefully and early in the morning. He was at home with his family. We will miss him very much, but his light shines. "

Recognized as the "godfather of avant-garde cinema" among moviegoers, Mekas, of Lithuanian origin, founded the reference film magazine Cinematographic culture in 1954 and became the Village VoiceFirst film critic in 1958.

Experimental artist, the works of Mekas – including those of 1969 Walden and 2000 As I walked away from time to time, I saw brief glimpses of beauty – presented a series of non-linear images and home movies sewn together by his own monotonous narration. "I live, so I make movies. I make movies, so I live, "said Mekas in Walden, which also contains the oldest known images of the Velvet Underground:

Mekas was a key player on the New York film and art scene. In addition to founding the Anthology Film Archives (located in the East Village, one of the largest avant-garde film collections), it has inspired some of the most important artists of our time. Mekas is credited with introducing the Velvet Underground to Andy Warhol, who has rehearsed in New York's Mekas loft. John Lennon and Yoko Ono invited Mekas and his camera to capture the couple's "Bed-In for Peace" in Montreal in 1969.

"The cinema, like any other art, is like a big tree with many, many branches," said Mekas at Village Voice in 2017. "Some are larger, others smaller, but they are all smaller, and the smaller ones are sometimes larger than the big ones – because they attract light, the sun, they feed the big trunk of the tree. "

Harmony Korine said of Mekas in a 2012 guardian profile, "Jonah is a true hero of the underground and a radical of the first degree – a metamorph and a lazy time … He sees things that others can not … His cinema is a cinema of memory, of soul, air and fire. . There is no one else like him. His films will live forever. "