"Scenes from the Life of Hermann Nitsch" by Jonas Mekas
avantgardefilm at the nitsch museum
The nitsch museum is presenting an absolute gem of avant-garde film: “Scenes from the Life of Hermann Nitsch” by Jonas Mekas, starting March 29, 2025 in the chapel next to the main exhibition hall!
At the end of 1967, Hermann Nitsch received a postcard from his friend Peter Kubelka, who was then working at the UN Film Archive in New York and a member of the board of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative founded by Jonas Mekas. Kubelka wrote that he could secure an invitation for Nitsch to come to the United States to perform two performances of the Orgien Mysterien Theater. Nitsch packed his bags and traveled to New York in early 1968. Within a few weeks, he was able to stage a total of four performances in the USA. This trip was a great success for Hermann Nitsch and also marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the filmmaker, author, and artist Jonas Mekas.
Jonas Mekas was born in Lithuania in 1922 and emigrated to the United States in 1949. Shortly after arriving in New York, he began documenting his life in a diary-like manner using a 8mm film camera. He soon became involved in the American avant-garde film movement and, in 1954, founded the magazine Film Culture with his brother Adolfas Mekas. In 1958, Jonas Mekas became the first full-time film critic for the weekly newspaper Village Voice and, in his column “Movie Journal,” advocated for an alternative approach to filmmaking. In 1962, he founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and, in 1964, the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, which eventually became the Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important collections of avant-garde film to date. As a filmmaker, Jonas Mekas accompanied renowned artists such as Andy Warhol, Nico, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and Salvador Dalí with his camera. His works have been shown at the Venice Biennale, documenta 14 in Kassel, the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the MoMA in New York, among others. In 2008, Mekas received the Austrian Medal of Honor for Science and Art. In 2017, he received the B3 BEN Award for his lifetime achievement. His work influenced generations of filmmakers and artists such as Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, and Chantal Akerman. Jonas Mekas died in Brooklyn in 2019 at the age of 96.
“Scenes from the Life of Hermann Nitsch” by Jonas Mekas is a casual, personal film portrait created over a period of several decades. Beginning with excerpts from his earliest actions in 1968 in New York and Cincinnati, the camera follows Hermann Nitsch through Prinzendorf, Vienna, New York, and Naples until 1995. Explanatory intertitles provide descriptions of the various locations and scenes, which were edited together in a non-chronological order. Jonas Mekas filmed all but a few scenes himself and shows Nitsch together with his friends Peter Kubelka, Raimund Abraham, Günter Brus, George Maciunas, Giuseppe Morra, and many others.
The nitsch museum thanks Sebastian Mekas and Rita Nitsch for their kind support!
„Szenen from the Life of Hermann Nitsch“
60 min © Jonas Mekas 2010