A seminal feature of the New American Cinema movement, Hallelujah The Hills is a lighthearted surreal comedy in which two men vie for the love of Vera, played by two different actresses to capture the suitors’ visions of the ideal woman. Simultaneously an art film and a parody of art films, it is packed with references to silent comedy, the French New Wave and even Kurosawa's samurai films.

“A slapstick poem, an intellectual hellzapoppin, a gloriously fresh experiment and experience in the cinema of the absurd.”
— Time magazine

“Imagine a combination of Huckleberry Finn, Pull My Daisy, the Marx Brothers, and the complete works of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith, you have got it. What have you got? A film which is both hilariously funny and ravishingly lyrical.”
— The Guardian (UK)

“Next to the two big shots of the New York School, [Shirley] Clarke and [John] Cassavetes, he seemed a poor relative, especially since people got him confused with his brother. Hallelujah proved clearly that Adolfas is someone to be reckoned with. He is a master in the field of pure invention, that is to say, in working dangerously – ‘without a net.’ His film, made according to the good old principle — one idea for each shot — has the lovely scent of fresh ingenuity and crafty sweetness. Physical efforts and intellectual gags are boldly put together. The slightest thing moves you and makes you laugh — a badly framed bush, a banana stuck in a pocket, a majorette in the snow. He shows life as defined by Ramuz: ‘As with a dance, such pleasure to begin, a piston, a clarinet, such sorrow to be done, the head spins and night has come.’”
– Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers Du Cinéma

“This unpretentious low-budget film made with a few reels of film and a lot of imagination, is the wildest and wittiest comedy of the holiday season. Plotless and pointless, seemingly without a care for structure, it is infuriatingly unconventional and wholly disarming.”
— Eugene Archer, New York Times

“Even avowed enemies of the New American Cinema were impressed by the film’s lack of pretensions and its unexpected lyricism and zen serenity in the midst of nervous parody.”
— Andrew Sarris, Village Voice

Though overshadowed by his brother Jonas, Adolfas Mekas also played a vital role in fostering independent, underground, and experimental film in America. The brothers battled Nazi occupation in their native Lithuania, were imprisoned in a concentration camp and, after the war, relocated to New York City. There they co-founded and co-edited (with others) the seminal journal Film Comment, one of the most important vehicles for serious film criticism and cutting-edge film theory from 1959 well into the 1970s, at once spurring and championing the emergence of a newly-independent cinema that redefined film aesthetics, production, and distribution — paving the way for a true renaissance. In 1962, they co-founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, a ground-breaking distributor that empowered experimental filmmakers of every stripe (with no censorship) and inspired the creation of similar nonprofit distributors across the world.

Adolfas and Jonas Mekas collaborated on their own early films — Adolfas starred in Jonas’ Guns of the Trees (1961, narrated by Allen Ginsburg), Jonas assisted on Hallelujah the Hills, and they worked closely together on The Brig (1964), a legendary neo-verite document of the challenging and gritty play by The Living Theater set in a Marine prison.

Adolfas went on to found the film department at Bard College in 1971, where he taught until 2004 (and served as the film program's director until 1994).