Jonas Mekas Poetry Day

In collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, the Estate of Jonas Mekas, and the Lithuanian Culture Institute

Program organized by Julius Ziz

Microscope is very pleased to present an evening of poetry and film by Jonas Mekas as part of the Centre Pompidou’s Jonas Mekas Poetry Day being celebrated at venues around the world. The event at the gallery is curated by Julius Ziz and organized in collaboration with the Estate of Jonas Mekas and Lithuanian Culture Institute.

The program features a screening of Mekas’ 16mm film “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1972). The 88-minute diaristic film, which centers around themes of displacement, family, friends, language is composed not only with footage of Mekas’ return to Lithuania and his small village of Semeniškiai in August 1971 for the first time in 27 years after fleeing the country with his brother during WWII; but also with scenes filmed between 1950 and 1953 shortly after his arrival in New York City of him and his brother going about their daily lives, including in their Williamsburg, Brooklyn neighborhood; and Mekas in Vienna, Austria with friends including Peter Kubelka, Hermann Nitsch, Annette Michelson, and Ken Jacobs also during August of 1971. The film, which was Mekas’ second major work, was selected into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

The screening is preceded by rare audio of Mekas reading on of his earliest poems in his native Lithuanian language, followed by a live reading by Nathlie Provosty, an artist and friend of Mekas, of the English translation and followed by short videos of Mekas reading or performing his poetry in Berlin and Willisau, Switzerland.

Program:

Audio recording of Jonas Mekas reading poems from his first book “Idylls of Semeniškiai” originally published in 1948 in postwar Germany. Recorded in Mekas’ loft in Brooklyn, NY in 2016. In Lithuanian language.

Reading of the same poems as translated by Vyt Bakaitis in “There is No Ithaca,” by Nathlie Provosty. In English language.

Screening of “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1972, 16mm film, color, sound, 88 minutes) by Jonas Mekas in its original format.

Video of Mekas reading his “Requiem for the Twentieth Century,” recorded by Audrius Naujokaitis on February 16th, 2000 at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, New York.

Video of Mekas performing with the New York band The Himalayas at the Willisau Jass Festival, Willisau, Switzerland in the summer of 2007.

Admission is free.