Aurora is very proud to present film pioneer, Jonas Mekas and his newest film, LITHUANIA AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE USSR in the Flickerlounge, a year-round exhibition space that partners our programming with the main gallery exhibition at DiverseWorks. Forces of time, memory, change, and human collide in Mekas’s new 5 hour film which documents when Lithuania, Mekas’s home country, fought for independence from the stronghold of Soviet rule. With a video camera, Mekas recorded newscasts that played daily in 1991 on his television set at home.
LITHUANIA AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE USSR
by Jonas Mekas
2008, 4 hours and 46 minutes, video.
“This video is made up of footage that I took with my Sony from the television newscasts during the collapse of the USSR, with the home noises in the background. It’s a capsule record of what happened and how it happened during that crucial period as recorded by the television newscasters.
It can be also viewed as a classic Greek drama in which the destinies of nations are changed drastically by the unbending, bordering-on-irrational will of one small man, one small nation determined to regain its freedom, backed by Olympus in its fight against the Might & Power, against the Impossible.” –J.M.
Forces of time, memory, change, and human will collide in Mekas’s new film. The work’s title refers to the historical time when the world watched as Mekas’s home country of Lithuania fought for independence from the stronghold of Soviet rule. With a video camera, Mekas recorded newscasts that played daily in 1991 on his television set at home. Footage includes reports of the Soviet Union’s use of ‘aggressive actions’ that called for Lithuania to back down, freedom demonstrations, interviews and statements made by top politicians, journalists, and analysts including Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, Deputy Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and United States President George H.W. Bush among others, as well as moving portraits of the Lithuanian people who were directly affected by the conflict. Mekas’s account, reported by news outlets in the United States, also reveals the shaping and shifting of political, economic, and social relations between Eastern Europe and the West at the time.
