Jonas Mekas's "Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR" (2009)
This is the first time I'm writing about something I haven't seen but I am very very excited about this. I read that it will be screened in Anthology Film Archives (my favorite place to see film in the world) tonight.
In a post to Frameworks, Elle Burchill wrote that Jonas just finished a 4 hours 49 minutes long video called Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR.
Jonas Mekas describes the video as:
"The video is made up of footage that I took with my Sony from the television newscasts during the collapse of the USSR, with the home noises in the background. It’s a capsule record of what happened and how it happened during that crucial period as recorded by the television newscasters. It can be also viewed as a classic Greek drama in which the destinies of nations are changed drastically by the unbending, bordering-on-irrational will of one small man, one small nation determined to regain its freedom, backed by Olympus in its fight against the Might & Power, against the Impossible."
The last serious video work of Jonas Mekas I saw was A Letter from Greenpoint (2005)... What beautiful light, composition! A song sung on video!
One of the greatest moving-image artist alive releasing a new serious work is an event that deserves front-page exposure in all newspapers. Ezra Pound said "Literature is news that stays news." and this is true for all great art.
I truly hope somebody who sees the work will reply to this post.
Comments
1. visit the page link
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Walden-Diaries-Notes-and-Sketches-by-Jonas-Mekas/115280106163?ref=ts
2. become a fan
3. suggest the page to your friends
Thank you for all your help in advance.
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Synopsis: With Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Tony Conrad, Stan Brakhage, Carl Th. Dreyer, Timothy Leary, Baba Ram Dass, Gregory Markopoulos, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Jerome Hill, Barbet Schroeder, Jack Smith, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Velvet Underground,
Ken Jacobs, Hans Richter, Standish D. Lawder, Adolfas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Jud Yalkut, Peter Kubelka, Michael Snow, Richard Foreman, John Lennon, Yoko Ono...
Please check out and join Microcinema on other social networking sites:
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While hoping that people won't forget its true medium is film, and that Jonas' intricate cutting, "what happens between the frames", can only be felt on film...
Thanks for posting this, it's welcome publicity in this blog.