Adolfas Mekas, a Lithuanian immigrant who became an influential avant-garde filmmaker and teacher and who, with his brother Jonas, founded Film Culture, the seminal journal for cinéastes, died on Tuesday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 85.

The cause was heart failure, his wife, Pola Chapelle, said.

Though Jonas Mekas, a prolific director and avant-garde film archivist, became the better-known sibling, Adolfas Mekas made a handful of films that endure as avant-garde landmarks. The best known of them, “Hallelujah the Hills,” a comedy that spoofed movie history in telling an elliptical tale about two young men and their slapstick pursuit of the same girl, was among the critical and popular hits of the inaugural New York Film Festival in 1963.

“Hallelujah” was praised at the festival alongside films by Alain Resnais (“Muriel”), Roman Polanski (“Knife in the Water”), Luis Buñuel (“The Exterminating Angel”) and Joseph Losey (“The Servant”).

Source, New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/movies/adolfas-mekas-avant-garde-filmmaker-and-teacher-is-dead-at-85.html