10.01.24, 20:30, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972)

Pack your bags and get out your camera, Kinoautomat invites you on a radiant journey in 16mm through the memories of film pioneer Jonas Mekas.

Regarded by many as the grandfather of American avant-garde cinema, Mekas is a figure who forever changed the landscape of alternative cinema. Outside his work as a film critic and curator, Mekas is best known for an incisive and integer body of work that digs into the soul of the artist himself. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania is one of his first narrative documentaries. In the film, he returns to Lithuania, the country he was forced to leave in 1944 for fear of repercussions from the Soviet regime. Together with his brother, he visits his native village in search of a connection to his long-neglected roots.

Our guest speaker of the evening guides us through the illustrious genre of autobiographical essay cinema. Mekas broke through with a diary-like style that repurposes the personal archive as a network of ideas, dreams and doubts. In doing so, an intimate space opens up that crowns the filmmaking process as prosthetic memory of both maker and community.

This film will be introduced by film teacher Wiebe Copman.