Jonas Mekas
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
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Add rightsFormat DVD PAL, 4:3
Original format 16mm
Year 1971-1972
Language(s) English
Artist(s) Jonas Mekas, Adolfas Mekas
Subtitles English, French, Lithuanian
Running time 82 min
Films
REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA (1971-1972) 82'
Description
"Successively moving, indulgent, beautiful, poetic, banal, repetitive and courageously, carelessly personal."
— Vincent Canby, New York Times
"The film consists of three parts. The first part is made up of footage I shot with my first Bolex during my early years in America, mainly between 1950 and 1953. It shows my brother Adolfas and me, what we looked like at the time; various sequences of immigrants in Brooklyn, picnicking, dancing, singing; the streets of Williamsburg.
The second part was shot in August 1971, in Lithuania. Almost all the sequences come from Semeniskiai, the village where I was born. We see the old house, my mother (born in 1887), all the brothers, having fun, celebrating our return home. We don't really see today's Lithuania: we only see it through the memories of a displaced person returning home for the first time in twenty-five years.
The third part begins with a parenthesis in Elmshorn, in the suburbs of Hamburg, where we spent a year in a forced labor camp during the war. After the parenthesis closes, we are in Vienna where we see some of my best friends - Peter Kubelka, Hermann Nitsch, Annette Michelson, Ken Jacobs. The film ends with the fire at the Vienna fruit market in August 1971."
— Jonas Mekas