ESSAY AND GESTURE IN JONAS MEKAS: FROM SURVIVING TO EXILE, FROM EXILE TO ACCULTURATION IN AMERICA

Abstract

This article explores the dialogue between Lost Lost Lost (1976), a film by the Lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas, and his written diary, I Had Nowhere to Go. Diary of a Displaced Person (1991), which documents a dire exile of a survivor from World War II DP camps. Thus, I try to correlate some epistemological discussions of the essay, while a political gesture to legitimize a new regime of visibility in cinema as well as to problematize the experience of the displaced persons' subjectivity. By assuming this viewpoint, Lost Lost Lost, Mekas' most autobiographical film, offers a unique record on the reconstruction of memory and the process of acculturation in America. Mekas's diary, written around 1944 and 1955, constitutes a foundational matter in the comprehension of an aesthetic project focused on the urgency of the first-person writing.

Keywords
Mekas; Diary; Exile