The pioneer of the avant-garde film Jonas Mekas died at 96

Jonas Mekas – the influential American-Lithuanian filmmaker whose avant-garde work captured and helped shape the art scene and culture of New York City in the 1960s and 1970s – is dead, as reported by 39 Associated Press. He was 96 years old.

Born in Lithuania in 1922, Mekas was a refugee who had survived early adulthood in a Nazi labor camp during the Second World War. He came to the United States via the United Nations Refugee Organization in 1949, to settle in Brooklyn. Shortly after, he began using a camera to document "brief moments in his life" and soon became a filmmaker. He and his brother co-founded Cinematographic culture magazine in 1954, which appeared until 1996. Around the same time, he became friends with all sorts of personalities in New York's burgeoning arts community, including Allen Ginsberg, John Cage, The Monte Young and others.

Mekas shot the first public performance of Velvet Underground in 1964, his film being the only video evidence of this first show. Throughout his life, Mekas will make hundreds of films and videos, making video portraits of artists such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono (capturing the couple during their famous "Bed-Ins for Peace"), Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, Andy. Warhol and many others. At the time of his death, Mekas was considered by many to be the "godfather" of avant-garde cinema.