Born and raised in New York City, Oona grew up immersed in the world of art and cinema. The
daughter of filmmaker and
poet Jonas Mekas and photographer Hollis Melton, some of her first memories
are of dark theaters illuminated by the
light of a projector, watching works by everyone from Stan Brakhage and Harry Smith to Buster Keaton and Sergio
Leone. A performer from an early age, she began playing the violin at age four, and later danced with the New York
City Ballet.
After making several experimental films in the 90s, Oona turned her focus to acting. She had the honor of studying
with the late Fred Kareman at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She has been in many theater productions in New York
and Los Angeles, countless independent films and appears regularly on television. Oona also gets her "on-set fix" by
regularly booking commercial work. In the last few years, she has booked over 25 national television commercials.
Oona is a long-standing board member of Anthology Film Archives, a theater and archive in New York City dedicated to
the preservation and screening of cinema in all forms, with an emphasis on experimental and avant-garde film and
video. As a film programmer for Anthology, she is most proud of Fresh Film, a program curated together with her
partner Sky Sitney (daughter of P. Adams Sitney).
Continuing her childhood dream of being on both sides of the camera, in her next project The Sleepy Man, she will be
both directing and acting. The Sleepy Man is a short film based on the short story Sleepy People by Jonathan Lethem.
She is a proud cultural ambassador for the city of Vilnius, Lithuania.
She currently lives in Los Angeles.
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