Last Friday night around 8 pm, if you were on Delancey Street between Allen and Eldridge, you’d spot a swarm of twenty something kids in do-rags, anarchist tees, thrift store dresses, and on skateboards. You’d also spot a chap in a cocked brown hat fit for an Australian crocodile hunter. This bloke — a mere 88 years old — would be Jonas Mekas, the filmmaker/artist known as the `father of avant garde cinema,’ talking to fans and friends at the opening of his exhibit at the new James Fuentes gallery, relocated from Chinatown to LES.

Mekas, whose films and stills (some seen in the Hudson slide show and video here) seem to chronicle a simpler time in humanity and perhaps for their nostalgia of a world lost to technology addiction and greed, these clips still can be regarded as avant garde in that sense. One thing we can count on, the Lithuanian born Mekas can still drink his much younger friends under the table. He was still holding court past 2 am at his after-party at the Jane Hotel later that evening. Check out his work until October 31st at James Fuentes Gallery, 55 Delancey Street, between Allen and Eldridge.