Jerome Hill

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

Jack and Leo vie for the affections of Vera – who appears a little differently to each man – over the course of a series of energetic sketches, flashbacks and homages.

In 1950 Jerome Hill went to Zurich with the intention of making a film about Dr. Carl G. Jung. The project was abandoned when Hill decided that Jung was not a good subject. After Hill's death, Jonas Mekas edited the film which focuses on Dr. Jung as a person.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

The life of Jerome Hill corresponded with the first formative decades of cinema and a greater part of the 20th century. Through fragments of Hill’s surrealistic, handpainted and documentary films (as well as the James J. Hill family's home movies), this autobiographical work serves as an aesthetically complete documentary of Jerome Hill as an artist and offers a personal perspective of the seventh art.

An "autobiographical sketch" centered around small group of vacationers to Hill's estate in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. A gorgeous and relaxing film-soirée that acted as Jerome Hill's return to cinema after a time away. Workmen construct a walkway to the open air theatre, while friends lounge and hobby, toil and swim.

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

A tribute to Jonas Mekas' late friend and patron, Jerome Hill. Filmed on 16mm across three visits to Hill’s estate in Cassis, France, the film plays out as a tender visual diary of memory, passing time, and artistic exile. While the film focuses on daily life rather than explicit sexuality, it breathes with queer history. Hill was a closeted gay philanthropist who used his immense wealth to shelter and fund underground, heavily queer creatives. Mekas captures the warm, intimate atmosphere of this sanctuary, featuring legendary gay avant-garde icons like Warhol superstar Taylor Mead and actor Charles Rydell. Dedicated "to the wind of Lithuania" and featured in the 1979 Whitney Biennial, the film ultimately stands as a beautifully soft, authentic time capsule of a safe haven built by and for mid-century queer radicals.

In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.