A home for films no one else would show
Besides making diary films, Mekas built the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives, which still screen and preserve the avant-garde in New York.
In the 1960s there was nowhere reliable to see or rent independent and experimental films. Mekas co-founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative in 1962, a distributor that accepted every film submitted.
In 1970 he opened Anthology Film Archives with a programme of essential cinema. Since 1988 it has been housed in a former courthouse in the East Village, where it still runs screenings and preservation work.
Documented history