section KINO FERMISHED

Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland

  • Jonas Mekas
  • US/LT
  • 2012
  • 21

A poetic film by the avant-garde film-maker who died in 2019, in which he reflects on his time in Germany: In the second half of the 1940s Jonas Mekas, a non-Jewish man born in Lithuania, sought refuge in various displaced persons camps before finding his way to New York and into the film industry.

Supporting film of: THE ILLEGALS(Meyer Levin, PS/IL 1950 (2019 restauriert), 77 min)

Part of a Matineé in cooperation with Centrum Judaicum

On May 8, we present a matinee programme in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. This day marks not only the defeat of Nazi Germany, but also the beginning of the immediate postwar years, marked as they were by mass migration, upheaval, and radical change. This programme is dedicated to these events.

The event is the last in a joint series with the Centrum Judaicum. On its conclusion, a discussion is to take place featuring Knut Elstermann and Lea Wohl von Haselberg.
Language: German
For Tickets click here.

Credits

original title Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland

international title Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland

german title Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland

JFBB section KINO FERMISHED

  • director Jonas Mekas

country/countries US/LT

year 2012

duration 21

Portrait of Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas

BIO Mekas grew up in a Lithuanian Protestant Reformed family. During the Second World War, he typed texts for an anti-Nazi newspaper using a typewriter, which was then discovered by the Gestapo in a stable. From 1943 to 1944, Mekas lived in the attic of his uncle, a Protestant pastor, in Biržai. In 1944, Mekas and his younger brother Adolfas were arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn for eight months. Due to the Soviet occupation, he was unable to return to Lithuania after the war and was considered a homeless displaced person. He found accommodation in DP camps in Wiesbaden and Kassel. From 1946 to 1948, Mekas studied philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. At the end of 1949, Jonas Mekas emigrated with his brother to the United States, where he settled in Williamsburg, New York. He founded the magazine Film Culture (1954-1996), which is now regarded as a key institution for the emergence of US auteur film.