Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR

Forces of time, memory, change and human will collide in Jonas Mekas’s new film: a meditation on the time when the world watched as his home country of Lithuania fought for independence. Mekas continues to work with his video diaries, but differently, and may have delivered one of the most radical achievements of the year. Instead of his familiar wry, poetic commentary enveloping the past with distance, he’s chosen to present straight up the cathode glow of nightly TV news. Jonas is palpably present, occasionally making an exclamation; in the background his household is faintly heard. It is an immersion into the addictive grasp of the 24-hour news cycle (complete with repetitive refrains), into a moment of major social upheaval (with affinities to today’s news), and into one very personal fixation of an obsessive chronicler. (RM)
‘This video is hand-held footage I took from newscasts during the collapse of the USSR between 1989 and 1991. It can be viewed as a classic Greek drama in which the destinies of nations are changed drastically by the unbending will of a single man, one small nation determined to regain its freedom, backed by Olympus in its fight against the Might & Power, against the Impossible.’ (Jonas Mekas) Part one: 75 min. Part two: 69 min. Part three: 75 min. Part four: 67 min.