Meanwhile, a Butterfly Flies

Like Donald Richie, Jonas Mekas is a film maker, writer and passionate advocate for cinema. Like Richie he also lived nearly all his life in exile. A Lithuanian, arriving in New York in flight from war-torn Europe, he launched into a long career of starting film magazines, film screenings and writing about the experimental and avant-garde cinema. In his highly personal film diaries he recorded not just many of the ‘underground’ events from the 1950s to the 80s as well as his own life, creating a unique body of work that is both a record of those eventful years and remarkable film poetry in its own right.Julius Ziz has chosen to make this homage to the ‘father’ of the avant-garde in Mekas’ own film style: breathless, poetic, zany, often moving, Mekas talks – and sings – and is nearly always inspiring.