Widely regarded as the godfather of modern American avant-garde film.

Lithuanian avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas has died at the age of 96, reports The Associated Press. He died at home on Wednesday morning (January 23).

Mekas was a pioneer of the modern American avant-garde film, capturing Jacqueline Kennedy, Yoko Ono, John Lennon and some of the earliest known footage of The Velvet Underground in his films.

He was also a poet, a highly influential film columnist for the Village Voice and the founder and artistic director of the Anthology Film Archives, the New York-based nonprofit theater that counted a young Martin Scorsese has a frequent attendee.

Having survived a Nazi labor camp and years spent as a refugee during his childhood in Lithuania, Jonas and his brother Adolfas emigrated to New York in October 1949. He would then go on to help establish the New American Cinema Group in the 1960’s alongside Peter Bogdanovich and photographer-filmmaker Robert Frank.

On Wednesday, Jim Jarmusch described Mekas as: “one of the most inspiring artists I have ever encountered — the poets’ version of the Kung Fu master.”

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