Was the godfather of American avant-garde cinema a secret Nazi collaborator or a hero?
In short: Jonas Mekas, the visionary behind New York's Anthology Film Archives, is celebrated for his intimate diary films and his role in shaping avant-garde cinema. Yet, historians now debate his early years in Lithuania, questioning whether his wartime activities were those of an anti-Nazi resister or a far-right collaborator.
Born in 1922, Jonas Mekas arrived in the United States in 1949 after surviving labor camps and displaced persons' camps in Germany. He quickly became a central figure in Manhattan's downtown art scene, co-founding the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives. His 'diary films,' such as Walden and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, pioneered a new genre that captured the fleeting, personal moments of his life. For decades, he was revered as a mentor to figures like Martin Scorsese and Yoko Ono, and as a champion of artistic freedom who fought against censorship in the 1960s.
The narrative of Mekas as an anti-Nazi hero was challenged in 2018 by historian Michael Casper. Casper argued that during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, Mekas edited and contributed to two collaborationist, far-right newspapers. While Mekas maintained that he was secretly transcribing BBC broadcasts for the underground, Casper contended that Mekas participated in movements supporting the 1941 Nazi invasion. This revelation sparked a fierce debate within the art world, with some scholars like Saulius Sužiedėlis criticizing the lack of nuance in these allegations, while others, including film critics J. Hoberman and B. Ruby Rich, supported the need for a critical re-examination of his past.
The controversy intensified following a 2022 retrospective at the Jewish Museum. Casper accused the institution of 'World War II revisionism,' arguing that the art world remains too invested in protecting the image of Mekas as a 'sacred figure' to confront his historical record honestly. Internal emails from the museum, later accessed by journalists, revealed tensions between staff and researchers over how to address these charges. Today, the legacy of Mekas remains split: he is simultaneously remembered as a titan of experimental cinema who filmed his life with compulsive devotion, and as a man whose early political choices remain a subject of intense, unresolved historical scrutiny.
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