Jonas Mekas and the

The guardian of America's experimental cinema, as Jonas Mekas is sometimes called, is at the center of this documentary about the underground film movement. In the 1950s, Mekas began bringing together filmmakers who were working in noncommercial forms, largely in isolation. Over the course of many years, he became colleagues with and/or mentored such luminaries as Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, Peter Bogdanovich, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, David Lynch, and William Burroughs, recognizing in their work his own mission: to make people see in new ways. This homage to Mekas and to the Anthology Film Archives he founded, which has preserved countless underground films over the decades, eschews nostalgia, offering instead a wealth of heretofore unseen material. Along with interviews by numerous colleagues of Mekas who share their history in and thoughts on the movement and film in general, Visionaries offers excerpts from more than 100 works that challenge narrative convention. A few titles ...