October 1–31, 2026
e-flux Film presents Jonas Mekas’s Letter to John from Jonas (1999, 25 minutes) as the October 2026 edition of Staff Picks, in collaboration with the Jonas Mekas Estate.
Watch the film on e-flux Film through October 31 here.
Addressing John Hanhardt, then the Guggenheim Museum’s senior curator of film and media arts, Mekas explains his refusal of a proposed merger between the museum and Anthology Film Archives. Speaking to the camera over a glass of wine, he defends the independence of an organization he helped build.
The letter draws on decades of work creating structures for experimental cinema. Mekas acknowledges preservation efforts beyond Anthology while insisting on its importance as a place where filmmakers from across the world find a sense of belonging. His response gives an institutional disagreement the form of a personal appeal.
Viewed today, Mekas’s refusal asks how cultural institutions might retain the freedom to act on their commitments when crisis makes compromise appear necessary for survival.
About the artist
Jonas Mekas (1922–2019) was a Lithuanian-born filmmaker and poet who settled in New York in 1949. His films, including Walden (1969) and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000), drew on footage gathered over years of everyday life. With his brother Adolfas, he founded Film Culture in 1954. His Movie Journal column in the Village Voice and his work with the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives helped establish a public culture for experimental cinema.
About the series
Staff Picks is a streaming series on e-flux Film of films selected to disrupt the monotony of algorithmic recommendation. Before the end times of big data, we used to discover suggested content along dusty shelves in video rental stores, where Post-it notes scribbled by shift workers implored us to experience the same movies that made them guffaw, scream, or weep. Sometimes the content bored us, sometimes it overwhelmed us, and sometimes, as if by magic, it was just right. e-flux invites you to relive this rental store mode of perusal, with personalized picks curated through judgment that does not take into consideration your viewing history.
For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.
