You are viewing the fourth issue of Documentica. It’s a series of stories that feature local and international artists, creatives and thinkers.
Documentica No. 4 celebrates the legendary Jonas Mekas (1922 - 2019 ), a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, poet and artist, known as the “godfather of American avant-garde cinema”. Having experienced both, Russian and German occupations, being captured by the Nazis, later - escaping to New York, USA, Jonas Mekas has experienced his youth as a displaced person. Being a poet he believed that poetry cannot be written in a non-native language, therefore he created a visual language of his own. The poems became movies, and movies - a way of communication, a way of finding a place.
"Last night I had an ecstatic dream.
Suddenly before my eyes appeared fields and fields of wild flowers. They were passing by my eyes. Field after field, the meadows full of flowers in the most exquisite colors: blue, yellow, red, purple and they were all so real. I could almost smell them, like in my childhood.
I told this dream to Augustė this morning. So he said, you know, this dream tells you that in your previous life you were a bee. Yes, I said, it must be so. I always liked flowers, I always gathered them as a child for the healing woman of my village. She trusted only me. I knew all the flowers of our village and the neighboring villages too. So you may be right. I always had a very personal relationship with flowers."
Entry from Jonas Mekas’ diary. October 9 1997.
“Watching my films, you can follow my life from the moment I landed in New York. People come into it, the children are born and they grow up. it’s a huge narrative, huge story. Within that story there are moments that are poetry. Then I stop and concentrate on that moment. And it might be just a flower.”
This document is created in partnership with &editions - a non-profit initiative that offers exclusive artists’ limited edition prints, books and zines by established and emerging artists from Baltic region.
Signed digital prints of Jonas Mekas stills are now available to purchase at V2 Concept store. Find them online and at our store at Ševčenkos g. 16i, Vilnius.
