Oona Mekas

For over 70 years, Jonas Mekas, internationally known as the "godfather" of avant-garde cinema, documented his life in what came to be known as his diary films. From his arrival in New York City as a displaced person in 1949 to his death in 2019, he chronicled the trauma and loss of exile while pioneering institutions to support the growth of independent film in the United States. Fragments of Paradise is an intimate look at his life and work constructed from thousands of hours of his own video and film diaries-including never-before-seen tapes and unpublished audio recordings. It is a story about finding beauty amidst profound loss, and a man who tried to make sense of it all... with a camera.

An idealistic grade school teacher has a fear of speaking up in public (other than in front of her kids). But when she finds out that children in her school are going hungry- thanks to federal cutbacks in school lunch programs- it compels her to do things she wouldn't have thought she could do, including confronting a Congressman, in order to help the children.

When a couple decides to adopt a stray cat their perspective on life changes radically, literally altering the course of time and space and testing their faith in each other and themselves.

Paramedic Vincentas is a passionate gambler, who is forced to make radical decisions to return the debts. An idea strikes Vincentas to create an illegal game related to his profession. Love, life and death will be at stake.

Sinaloa hitchhikes into Texas to meet Merle, her half-sister by way of their dead country musician father. As the two get to know each other, Sinaloa's chaotic influence starts to unravel Merle's quiet, comfortable life. While the family music legacy brought Sinaloa to Austin, she won't leave without taking revenge against the people who stole her daddy away years ago.

A young woman stands by a car while scenes from metropolitan life flash by.

An autobiographical diary film assembled from unused footage shot between 1960 and 2000, interwoven with reflections, music, and glimpses of family, friends, city life, and travel. Mekas transforms these fragments into a poetic celebration of memory, happiness, and the passing of time.

Unable to sleep, Jonas Mekas drifts through New York nights, moving between apartments, studios, galleries, bars, and clubs. Along the way he encounters friends and fellow artists—including Ken and Flo Jacobs and Yoko Ono—capturing an intimate mosaic of nocturnal encounters, reflections, and moments of community.

Tuna and long time friend, Alex, are on their quest to go to Richard's wedding in Central Park. The duo meet up with their motley assortment of old friends only to revive old jealousies and debates on politics, religion, and the meaning of success, as the whole party runs the risk of going off the rails in a downpour of rain and emotions.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

TV film, nominated for Best Experimental Series in 2010, in Streamy Awards.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

This film has to do with the early years of my daughter Oona, when she was three or four years old

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.

The film is arranged in six chronologically-ordered parts, each filmed in a different location during Oona's third year.