Jonas Mekas: I Had Nowhere To Go

Thursday, September 14th, ISSUE presents an evening of screenings, talks, and discussion with storied film activist Jonas Mekas and writer and BOMB Magazine contributor Charity Coleman as a part of Brooklyn Book Festival.

Jonas Mekas shows his film Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland, 1971/1993 (edited 2012), never before screened in the U.S. (running time: 25 minutes). A non-chronological presentation of the filmmaker’s time in German forced labor camps and displaced person camps, the film details a story that begins in 1944 and goes on until 1949. A reading and discussion follows after the screening. Copies of his book, I Had Nowhere To Go (diaries 1944-1955), newly republished by Spector Books, will be available at the event.

Jonas Mekas is a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator. In 1954, with his brother, he started Film Culture magazine, and in 1958 he began his celebrated Movie Journal column in the Village Voice. He is the founder of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative (1962), and the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque (1964), which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives in 1970. Anthology Film Archives remains the world’s most important repository of avant-garde films. Mekas’s work has been presented at venues such as the 51st Venice Biennale, Documenta 11, the PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Centre Pompidou. In 2007, Mekas completed a series of 365 short videos released once a day on the internet, and has since continued to share new work on his website. Mekas has lectured on film at several universities including MIT, Cooper Union, and New York University.