Today

 

 

 

Sean Mekas' photos will be featured in a group show at:
UNFRAMED ARTISTS GALLERY, 173 Huguenot Street, New Paltz, New York
May 12th - June 22nd, 2012
Opening Reception May 12th, Saturday 4-7pm
seanmekas@gmail.com

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We are happy and proud to announce that Ashim Ahluvalia’s film
MISS LOVELY has been invited to this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
It is the first time in 20 years that an Indian film has been chosen
by Cannes, and the first time ever that a Bard Film grad has had his
work featured in this prestigious festival of cinema. Long live Ashim!
He lives the words of St. Tula – “Dream 24 dreams per second.”

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Currently, Pola, The Widow Mekas, is transcribing 3 volumes of my early diaries, from 1941 during the war years in Lithuania and Germany. She has had the help of Shumona Goel and Shelley Cullen, two close friends of ours. Work progresses slowly but surely. It is exciting to report that Pola has found, quite by accident, the original diaries in Lithuanian. Although not destroyed by the fire of '93, they have been rendered extremely fragile by water damage.

In addition, she and the alum office at Bard College, and my colleagues in the Film Dept are busy preparing a tribute for me during the Bard Commencement weekend, May 26th. For up-to-date details about the tribute on the Bard campus at the Film Center, contact Jane Brien, Director of the Bard Alum office - Brien@Bard.edu

If there are film grads who have DVD copies of their senior projects or other films in which I appear, please be in touch with David Avallone. David has been asked to make a compilation of these appearances by me, Adolfas, for screening at the tribute on May 26th.

NEW NEWS - Giuseppe Zevola, the noted actor/poet/artist and grande amico mio, is coming from Napoli to recite the works of Giordano Bruno in my honor on May 26th at Bard. Zevola has been one of my inspirations for the fantasy film I conceived and which will be made on the fantasy life and death of one of the last victims of the Roman Inquisition. Bruno was burned at the stake for “heresy” on February 17, 1600. I join Judith Malina in shouting - Heretics & Anarchists Unite!!

Also, I have heard that Phil Hartman is rushing the construction of Two Boots Bard across from the main entrance to the College on Rte 9G, so that the festivities of homage can continue into the late evening hours of May 26th. I hope he’s well-stocked with Jenny!!
 

  

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Hallelujah the Hills

Released by www.re-voir.com

 

The DVD is PAL (no Zone) – that means it will play on any DVD player in the world, except in the technologically retarded USA - but it will play on any computer.

 

The DVD includes a 27 min. short – Hallelujah the Villa

A spirited interview with Adolfas Mekas, directed and edited by David Avallone.

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Even avowed enemies of the New American Cinema were impressed by the film’s lack of pretensions and its unexpected lyricism and zen serenity in the midst of nervous parody.

Andrew Sarris, Village Voice, 1963

Tourné suivant le bon vieux principe d’une idée par plan, ses collines embaument de fraîche ingénuité et de gentillesse rusée. L’effort physique y côtoie hardiment le gag intellectuel.  On s’émeut et on rit d’un rien: un buisson mai cadre, une banane dans la poche, une majorette dans la neige…

Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema, 1963

This unpretentious low-budget film made with few reels of film and a lot of imagination, is the wildest and wittiest comedy of the holiday season.  Plotless and pointless, seemingly without a care for structure, it is infuriatingly unconventional and wholly disarming. Adolfas Mekas displays an uninhibited affection for cinema, as evidenced in a staggering series of references to other movies - from D.W. Griffith to Jean-Luc Godard, with Japanese subtitles to supplement a Ugentsu-like fireside scene.    

Eugene Archer, New York Times, 1963

Hallelujah the Hills is the weirdest, wooziest, wackiest screen comedy of 1963 – a slapstick poem, an intellectual hellzapoppin, a gloriously fresh experiment and experience in the cinema of the absurd.                                                             

Time, 1963

 Undoubtedly the greatest success (of Cannes) was  the American film, Hallelujah the Hills.  Imagine a combination of Huckleberry Finn, Pull My Daisy, the Marx Brothers, and the complete works of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and W.D. Griffith, you have got it.  What have you got?  A film which is both hilariously funny and ravishingly lyrical.               

Richard Roud, The Guardian, 1963

 

  
     

 

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