"I live, therefore I make films. I make film, therefore I live."
Engaged in an art free from any form of academicism, Jonas Mekas, of Lithuanian origin, is a virtuosic filmmaker, but he is also a poet, critic, and settler. Through his varied activities (directing, criticism, film distribution, organization of independent distribution structures), he is at once the conscience, the unifier, and the chronicler of American avant-garde cinema. He legitimized the film-journal as a major genre of avant-garde cinema and found an appropriate language for it (based on collages, or visual montages, but stripped of the symbolism still present in cinema at the time), able to bear witness to his adventure and that of his fellow travelers. Asynchrony, repeated words, shaky or overexposed images: these technical imperfections are means of saying what cannot be said. Thus does an epic poem continues from one Mekas film to the next.