Adolfas Mekas

Adolfas Mekas
Born 30 September 1925
Semeniskiai, Lithuania
Died 31 May 2011 (aged 85)
Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
Known for Cinema

Adolfas Mekas (30 September 1925 – 31 May 2011) was a Lithuanian-born filmmaker, writer, director, editor, actor, educator and mentor. With his brother Jonas Mekas, he founded the seminal magazine Film Culture, as well as the Film-Makers' Cooperative and was associated with George Maciunas and the Fluxus art movement at its beginning. He made several short films that showed his essentially comic and anarchic spirit, culminating in the feature Hallelujah the Hills in 1963, which played the Cannes Film Festival of that year and is now considered a classic of American Film. He was a key member of the New American Cinema of the 1960s.

Early life

Adolfas Mekas was born on a farm in Semeniskiai, Lithuania to Elzbieta and Povilas Mekas. His sister was Elzbieta and brothers were Povilas, Petras, Kostas and Jonas. Adolfas was the youngest in the family.

At age 14, while still in Lithuania, Mekas saw his first film Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn, the cine-magic of which he would never forget. In July 1944, toward the end of World War II when Lithuania was occupied by both Soviet and German troops, Adolfas and his brother Jonas left Lithuania by train, fearing retaliation for their participation in the underground. Near Hamburg, they were taken from the train and put into a forced labor camp. After World War II ended, the brothers were sent from one DP camp to another across Germany. While in the displaced persons camps in Germany, Adolfas attended classes in literature and theatre arts and philosophy at the University in Mainz, where he also wrote and published short stories, novels, and tall-tale books for children. Having been refused entry into Israel, New Zealand, and Canada, Mekas was sent as a refugee to the United States, where he landed with his brother at the end of 1949.

USA–The Beginning

In the spring of 1950 he purchased a 16mm Bolex camera and began photographing life around him while he wrote more than 50 scripts and attended every film screening offered at the Museum of Modern Art, Cinema 16, Thalia, Stanley, and other venues for films of any kind, supporting himself with a variety of jobs from dishwasher to foreman in a Castro Convertible factory. He was drafted into the Army during the Korean War, assigned to the Signal Corps, and sailed for France in September 1951. On his return to the United States from Europe in 1953, he continued writing and filming and also began organizing, with his brother Jonas, the American Film House. Though the brothers approached many independent filmmakers, none were interested in collaborating on the project. Adolfas and Jonas persisted for over a year to find a location in Manhattan, but without success. In 1954 they abandoned the idea of the American Film House and with the money they had borrowed for the Film House project started a film society, which they called the Film Forum. "We showed films at public schools and at Carl Fischer Hall on 57th Street, wherever we could, until we went bankrupt in the middle of the second film series later in the year just in time to start Film Culture magazine, the first issue of which came out in December 1954." - Adolfas Mekas

Film Culture magazine would be an outlet for anyone who had something to say about film.

“The brothers little realized at the time that they were actually elevating American culture to new heights, and marshaling a level of film criticism that has never been equaled since in our country." -P. Adams Sitney.

Adolfas served as editor of Film Culture until 1968.

Together with his brother in the early 50s, Adolfas wrote, directed and photographed a number of films that were never finished, including his first script in 1950 – Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost later to become Lost, Lost, Lost, and in 1951, Grand Street – both films documented the fate of displaced persons, old and new immigrants to Brooklyn. In 1953, together with Jonas, he wrote, directed and edited a somber romance called Silent Journey, in which he played a principal role. In 1955, with Jonas and Edouard de Laurot, he began Film Essay, a spoof of American avant-garde film of that time.

During those years, he made short trips to Canada to visit friends and find material for the novel he was writing, A Canadian Romance. In 1958 he left New York to spend a year in Oaxaca, Mexico. Living on $1 a day, he was free to write, and he wrote short stories, later published, and began longer works, notably his diaristic George The Man. While in Mexico, he finished the screenplay for Hallelujah the Hills. In 1959 he returned to the States and the daily struggle to live and create and express the needs of the growing movement of independent and avant-garde filmmakers in New York.

On 28 September 1960, hosted by Adolfas, brother Jonas and producer Lew Allen, a group of 20 independent filmmakers met at the Producers Theatre on West 16th Street and by unanimous vote bound themselves into the free and open organization of the New American Cinema. The second meeting took place on September 30 at the Bleecker Street Cinema and the first draft of the Statement of Aims was read, discussed and approved, and later published in Film Culture magazine. Subsequently, a third and fourth meeting took place, leading to the establishment in 1961 of the Film-makers' Co-op – a distribution organization for the dissemination of independent, experimental and avant-garde films. The New York group included among others, Lionel Rogosin, Shirley Clarke, Robert Frank, Maya Deren, Peter Bogdanovich and Daniel Talbot.

USA–The Middle Years

In 1961 brother Jonas began shooting "Guns of the Trees." Adolfas assisted him in all stages of production, writing and editing, and played one of the leads in the film. Other players were Ben Carruthers, Frances Stillman and Argus Speare Juilliard. The controversial film was considered to be a "poetic-political manifesto.”

In 1963 Adolfas' film Hallelujah The Hills was the surprise smash hit of the Cannes Festival. Subsequently it was invited to 27 film festivals, including the First New York Film Festival, London Festival, Montreal Film Festival, Mannheim Film Festival and the Bombay Film Festival; it won the Silver Sail at the Locarno Festival, was invited to a Command Screening for the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace and had a 15-week run at the Fifth Avenue cinema in New York. Time magazine called it "... the weirdest, wooziest, wackiest screen comedy of 1963." Jean-Luc Godard wrote in Cahiers du Cinema, "Hallelujah proved clearly that Adolfas is someone to be reckoned with. He is a master in the field of pure invention, that is to say, in working dangerously – 'without a net.' His film, made according to the good old principle – one idea for each shot – has the lovely scent of fresh ingenuity and crafty sweetness.”

In 1964 Adolfas was hired as post production coordinator and editor of the independent comedy drama Goldstein, which had been co-directed by Ben Manaster and Philip Kaufman. Adolfas created a tour-de-force Jewish fable, edited as a fugue. Cannes Festival '64.

The same year Adolfas edited sound and film footage taken by brother Jonas of a performance of "The Brig", directed by Judith Malina. It was selected to play the New York Film Festival, London Festival, Moscow Festival and others and took First Prize at the Venice Festival in the documentary category. "...one of the more remarkable films in the entire fest (NY Film Festival '64) is the Jonas and Adolfas Mekas film version of The Living Theatre's 'The Brig.' This filmed-on-the-stage version of a play....has a vitality as film which is unique and does in cinema terms what the seekers for new form in plays and novels are attempting." Variety, 30 Sep, '64.

In March 1964 he met his wife to be, Pola Chapelle. They were separated before their marriage by the production of his second feature film, The Double Barreled Detective Story, but never again during their long lifetime together. A rough and tumble nineteenth century town was built just outside Johnstown, Pennsylvania, for the location of the filming of The Double Barreled Detective Story. The screenplay was based on a Mark Twain short story and the film starred Hurd Hatfield and Greta Thyssen. In spite of the extraordinary performance of Hurd Hatfield, who played two parts in the movie, there were problems with the production from the start, and Adolfas never got to do a final cut. The producers took the film out of his hands and refused to release it. Nonetheless, with a little help from his friends, he was able to whisk a print to the Venice Film Festival of 1965. Gene Moskowitz in Variety wrote of the film - "The Double Barreled Detective Story is authentic Mark Twain-esque with all the rustic humor of the 1880s....Mekas shows he has a way with parody and he gets disarmingly innocent performances from his cast."

In the same year Adolfas directed Pola Chapelle in a short parody of Italian art films of the time, written by Peter Stone for the Broadway show Skyscraper which starred Julie Harris and Charles Nelson Reilly. Paul Sorvino played opposite Pola in the three-minute film clip which won kudos from the critics. ".... a priceless film sequence satirizing Italian movies, for some of the heartiest laughs of the evening." Nadel, NY World Telegram. "....there is a film sequence made by Adolfas Mekas: a very funny parody of an Italian movie, in Italian, complete with English subtitles and a projector that goes ‘zzzzzzz.” Julius Novick, Village Voice.

After his marriage in 1965 and for the rest of the 60s, Adolfas wrote and hustled his scripts to agents and producers while working as an editor and/or post production coordinator on various independent films, including the soft-core flics of Joe Sarno, ABC-TV's Wild World of Sports, and a few TV musical extravaganzas. He was encouraged by Howard Hausman of the William Morris Agency, who had seen the future of cinema in Adolfas' first film Hallelujah The Hills and made more than a few attempts at getting Adolfas' scripts into the hands of independent producers who would understand their uniquely different style. Although three of his screenplays remained at Warner Brothers for a few years, under consideration, none were ever produced.

In 1967, with a very tight budget, Adolfas made a 16mm b&w film from his own script – "Windflowers, Elegy for a Draft Dodger." "....No frills, no Gipsy violin effects, no second movement of Aranjuez's concerto – and it is thereby, poignant. It is the other side of Vietnam. The stubbornness of a silent young man who is running away....who simply wanted to live." Cahiers du Cinema, Dominique Noguez.

Shortly after the completion of "Windflowers," Adolfas was contacted by Governor Harold E. Hughes of Iowa and his staff. After an interview with the Governor, he was given the job of creating promotional commercials for Hughes' campaign for the United States Senate. He had no experience in the genre, but the challenge was enticing and he spent the summer of 1967 filming Harold Hughes as he stumped the Iowa cornfields. He produced 35 TV commercials for Hughes election to the Senate. Harold Hughes won.

In 1968 Adolfas wrote, directed, and starred in a 3-minute short entitled "Interview with the Ambassador from Lapland." It was photographed by brother Jonas, with assistance from Shirley Clarke on sound. Pola Chapelle produced. "In these 3 minutes Mekas is Swift, the horrible and admirable Swift of the 'Modest Proposal.' One really must admit that Mekas has made the USA a bit less loathsome." Cahiers du Cinema, DN. (Nota Bene: Jonas sometimes claims authorship of this short film, calling it the Time Life Vietnam Newsreel.)

In 1969 Adolfas photographed and edited "Fishes in Screaming Water" a catfilm produced by Pola Chapelle for the First International CatFilm Festival – INTERCAT ’69 – which she founded. For the 2nd International Catfilm Festival in 1973, he made the award winning "How to Draw A Cat."

He edited and subtitled "Companeras and Companeros" in 1970 – A feature documentary, shot in Cuba by David and Barbara Stone. He edited three versions: for United States release, for European release, for Cuban release. That same year he cut and edited a film by Yoko Ono, 360 legs, in "Up Your Leg."

In 1972, assisted by Pola Chapelle, Adolfas completed a film which documented the autobiographical journey of his return to Lithuania after a 27-year absence. "Going Home" was invited to the New York Film Festival and many other festivals that year. It was part of the Conference on Visual Anthropology at Temple University in 1974 and chosen by the Museum of Modern Art to be screened in its Anthropological Cinema exhibit, which toured internationally from 1975 to 1977.

The Bard Years

On 3 July 1971 Adolfas received a teaching contract from Bard College. Soon after, he began organizing the young Film Department. At first denied tenure, he began a campaign in pursuit of it, believing that if he were given tenure, the Film Department would be tenured. Armed with letters from colleagues in the film world and ex-students, he was successful, and in 1979, tenure was granted him. He and Pola, young son Sean and Mamacat moved to the Hudson Valley, where he would dedicate himself to sharing his passion for the magic of film with the eager and talented young people of the then pastoral Bard College. Down The Road, a nearby pub became their after hours seminar room.

Only a very small budget was available to the Bard Film Department, and the department continued as the "orphan in the storm" for many years. Not deterred, never frustrated, once a year Adolfas rented a truck, and together with Pola, he scoured the labs of his film friends in New York City whose donations of reels, split reels, cores, viewers, projectors and occasionally a moviola, were carried back to Bard's Carriage House – the Bard Film Center of the early years. The lack of proper funding of the department worked to energize Adolfas and his students in innovative ways, e.g., to raise funds for senior projects in film, he held lunchtime auctions outside the dining commons on campus. The film department was small – more than three graduates was rare in the early years; but unceasingly active and always visible, the dynamic center of the Bard campus. During his years as Chairman, Adolfas brought to the Bard Film Department some of the most noted independent and experimental filmmakers, including, Bruce Baillie, Ernie Gehr, Andrew Noren, Barry Gerson, Peter Hutton and Peggy Ahwesh and film historians and theorists Paul Arthur, P. Adams Sitney. John Pruitt, and guest faculty – friends including Ken Jacobs, Sidney Peterson, Shirley Clarke and George Kuchar. The Bard Film Department grew in stature to become one of the most respected film departments in the nation.

P. Adams Sitney writes, "what came to be known as the People's Film Department was his (Adolfas') theater of hijinks; he surprised even himself with his enormous didactic gifts, his startling administrative skill and his unceasing fount of comic invention. His own fractured education and his nearly total disregard for academic decorum made him the ideal professor. Nowhere in the archive of film is there an invented character who could come near the brilliant, lovable, outrageous mischief that consistently turned his classrooms into arenas of magic. He taught generations how to see and act.”

St. Tula, the Patron Saint of Cinema

In the summer of 1971, while visiting Italy after his first trip back to the home he had left behind in Lithuania, St. Tula made her appearance in Adolfas' life. When, in Porto Santo Stefano, he first saw her representation, it was clear that she was the Patron Saint of Cinema. He had no name for her at the time, but snapped a photo and displayed it in the Film Department of Bard College. Shortly after, written under her photo in the Carriage House, was seen: “St. Tula loves your film. Even if no one else does.” The name stuck. And the altar was built. Sometime later the "Sayings of St. Tula" was published. Bard students are still advised to carry her holycard with them.

In addition to Chairing the Film Department and teaching film courses until 2004, in 1981 he co-founded the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and directed the MFA program from '83 to '89. He also taught film courses at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and was a visiting lecturer at many institutions around the country.

Adolfas Mekas died in the early morning of 31 May 2011. By his bedside was his treatment for the fantasy docudrama he would make on the life and death by fire of the Neapolitan poet, philosopher, and socalled heretic Giordano Bruno. He called Bruno, the first Beatnik.

Filmography

Published works

References

    External links

    Further Reading