Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania

A personal and experimental account of a visit that filmmaker Jonas Mekas made to his birth village of Semeniškiai, Lithuania, in 1971, twenty years after he had last visited the country. During the Second World War, Mekas fled the Nazis, ending up in New York in 1949, where he became a key figure in experimental cinema.

Brief and fragmentary impressions of his trip to Lithuania, during which he visits the old family home and reunites with his mother and other members of his family, form the middle part of this travelogue. These are preceded by black-and-white images of Brooklyn in the 1950s and its community of displaced persons, and followed by a closing part in which the filmmaker goes to stay with artist friends in Vienna.

Over the silent images of his journey, Mekas’ voice speaks of his past, of loss, and of recovery. Serene images alternate with fragmentary, lively, quickly edited shaky shots, and are often over or underexposed. Mekas’ snapshots from his everyday personal life constitute the moving diary of a voracious filmmaker.