Lamplightings/Sunday Showcase
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
Directed by Jonas Mekas
Sunday, May 18, 1 pm
Free, first come, first served

In 1949, Lithuanian writer and poet Jonas Mekas departed a war-ravaged Europe accompanied by his brother Adolfas. The two would ultimately settle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and shortly thereafter would come upon a Bolex camera. In the ensuing years, Jonas Mekas would go on to define an era of artist’s cinema, vastly expanding the medium’s audience and reshaping the cinematic world as a whole. Through his writings in the Village Voice, his founding of spaces such as the Anthology Film Archives, and his unceasing advocacy for the celluloid language, Jonas planted innumerable seeds that continue to grow to this day.

Along with his support of the artists around him, Jonas also produced a constant flow of his own film work, specializing in expansive diaristic documents. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania marks a high point in these explorations, tracing Jonas and Adolfas’s life as they first arrive in America, followed by a return to the Lithuanian village where they were born, and culminating with the town where the brothers spent a year in a forced labor camp. Bristling with the energies, complexities, and beauty that Mekas contained, Reminiscences is a deeply personal artifact of an outsized artistic figure. 1972, Lithuania/U.S., 16mm, 82 minutes.