FICBUEU will dedicate its “Retrospective” to Jonas Mekas, the founder of american avant-garde cinema
FICBUEUBUEU. 19.06.24. This year, the Bueu International Film Festival will bring to the public the figure and work of Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), experimental filmmaker, cultural agitator, and father of American avant-garde cinema. The FICBUEU will dedicate its “Retrospective” section to him. During the festival, which is held between September 6 and 21, an anthology of 8 short films authored by Mekas will be screened in addition to the film correspondence that he maintained with the director José Luis Guerín. The FICBUEU wants to propose to its public a critical review of the director’s work, to which it also dedicates its «Caderno» #5.
The festival reaches its seventeenth edition with a program in which it will once again show a selection of some of the most interesting and innovative short films made around the world in recent times. By approaching the figure of Mekas, the Festival turns its gaze to a creator who, beyond his film work, was a key driving force of experimental cinema, creating publications and initiatives dedicated to its promotion, dissemination or study.
The Festival dedicates its «Caderno» #5 to Mekas
A fundamental figure in the history of cinema, Jonas Mekas was followed and admired by other great voices of the cultural revolution of the 1960s such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and Susan Sontag.
From Lithuania to New York
Born in Lithuania in 1922, Jonas Mekas began exploring avant-garde cinema after he arrived in New York after 10 years imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. He would eventually play a substantial role in the New American Cinema movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mekas became a tireless protector of independent filmmakers, advocating freedom of artistic expression, co-founding the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, fighting censorship, and turning his sights toward emancipation from conventional cinematic norms. Searching for the essence of cinema, his efforts culminated in the founding of the Anthology Film Archives in 1970, a museum, library and screening venue dedicated to the promotion of independent cinema.
He would continue making experimental films until he was 80 years old. His films were exhibited, in addition to movie theaters, in some of the most important museums in the United States and Europe. Those that the FICBUEU public will be able to see were made between 1966 and 2011.
«Retrospective» and «Caderno»
Jonas Mekas’ films combine everyday and significant moments of life from a point of view very close to poetry and documentary. The anthology of his work that makes up this year’s “Retrospective” section of the FICBUEU proposes a visual tour that shows the artist’s relationship with his surroundings, accentuating his nonconformity.
Among the Mekas films that will be shown in Bueu are the emblematic Cassis (1966), which challenges narrative conventions by capturing everyday life in an uninterrupted sequence of images, or the 365 DAY PROJECT, from 2007, composed of a short film made during every day of the year.
The «Caderno» #5 of the Bueu International Film Festival returns to the figure of Mekas, his context, or his contributions. It is also an interesting window into the New York cultural avant-garde of the 60s and 70s, in which Mekas occupied a prominent place. The researcher and teacher Nieves Febrer, author of the «Caderno», will participate in the FICBUEU to present the «Caderno» and reflect, at the same time as the public, on Mekas’ work.
