Page 103
belonged anywhere. Much of what was not used in the early reels of
Lost Lost Lost
is not so interesting, though it's material of historical importance about immigrant life. It should not be destroyed, though it's slowly rotting away . . .
MacDonald:
My first experience with
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
was at Hampshire College in 1973. After the screening some guy in the back row screamed at you, "Why can't you leave anything alone!" At the time it was sort of jolting. I'd watched the same film and to me it seemed quite lovely, but it had produced this violent response from this other person. Was that unusual?
Mekas:
Until ten years ago, that was a very common reaction to single-frame shooting and to short takes, to the use of overexposures or underexposures, and in general to the work of independent filmmakers. There is less and less of that now, since people have gotten used to this type of film language.
MacDonald: Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
is the earliest edited film in which you seem primarily involved with time, in which your return to the past is one of the major themes. There are mentions of the past in
Walden,
but not a direct concentrated involvement with it. Was it that you were going to be able to go back to Lithuania, so the whole issue became more frontal for you?
Mekas:
You may be correct. I don't know. It's complicated. The official reaction in the Soviet Union, and all the republics there, is to have no contact with any refugee, exile, DP who left during the war, unless that person is potentially useful to them. I had written already for
Isskustvo Kino,
a film journal in Moscow. Some Soviets had seen
The Brig
in Venice, and the editor of
Pravda,
who saw it in New York, wrote a glowing review. The film was invited to the Moscow Film Festival and presented there as an important antimilitary, anticapitalist work. They sent correspondents from Moscow to interview me here, and interviewed my mother in Lithuania. Suddenly I felt I had enough clout to apply for a visa to visit Lithuania. Since I had been invited to the Moscow Film Festival, I thought I would ask to be permitted to go to Lithuania also, to visit my mother.
For over a decade I had not been allowed even to correspond with my mother. I had written some poems against Stalin, so I was a criminal. My brothers were thrown into jail because of me, and my father died earlier than he would have, because of that. My mother's house was watched for years by the secret police. They hoped that one day I'd come home and they'd get me. My mother told me that in 1971. There was not a night, during my visit home, when I wasn't prepared to jump out the window, to run from the police if they decided to come after me. And this in 1971, many years after Stalin's death.