Synopsis
Jonas Mekas adjusts to a life in exile in New York in his autobiographical film, shot between 1949 and 1963.
1976 Directed by Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas adjusts to a life in exile in New York in his autobiographical film, shot between 1949 and 1963.
I normally wouldn’t start a review like this, and I don’t write this with any disrespectful intentions, but it is very surprising that the current most popular review of this film contains such a cynical interpretation of Jonas Mekas as an artist. Sure, a 3 hour experimental diary film will never appeal to the vast majority of viewers, so a low or middling opinion of “Lost, Lost, Lost” is entirely understandable. But what I find a bit sad about the small consensus around the top review is in the reading of deeply egotistical intentions into “Lost, Lost, Lost,” a film that is so loving in its modest observations of people and places and constructed with such spontaneity and lightness. Within…
Added to: Jonas Mekas Ranked
In the very first minutes of Jonas Mekas’ massive 1976-essay Lost, Lost, Lost he channels the famous opening lines of Homer’s The Odyssey. Right of the bat, he compares himself with the ancient hero Odysseus who was cast away from his home on the island Ithaca, destined to wander over the seas, continuously tested by different trials and tribulations, desperately working to find his home. Mekas, after leaving his home country at the end of world war II is trying to adjust in a similar way to his life in exile in Brooklyn. Yet where Odysseus found his strength in old-fashioned wisdom and muscular power, Mekas finds his strength in cinema. His love for the…
Jonas Mekas, more than most others speaks directly to the unfiltered mind. He is a poet, the conscience of which is presented in streams of words, often repeating, often wandering.
“O’ sing, Ulysses. Sing your travels. Tell where you have been. Tell what you have seen. And tell the story of a man who never wanted to leave his home. Who was happy and lived among the people he knew and spoke the language. Sing, how then he was thrown out into the world.”
Lost, Lost, Lost (1976) is a portrait of a man looking inward, however, in this inward search for the self, Mekas portrays the places he has visited and the people he has met, time lost and…
I booked tickets for a flight to New York with a dream of being able to meet and thank you.
This is the closest I'll ever get.
I love you, Jonas.
(Viewed at the Anthology Film Archive in 16mm)
"He remembered another day, 10 years ago. He sat on this beach 10 years ago with other friends. Memories, memories, memories. I have memories. I have been here before."
Filmmaker/critic Jonas Mekas contemplates his exile in his nearly 3 hour 'diary film'. These are simple images, shown with little context, no sound, snowstorms and street vendors, family dinners and political meetings, everything moving together at 24 frames per second, unless it's less than that, and then it's less than 24 frames per second. The important thing is that these aren't memories, not in the traditional sense. These are fragments of time itself, all washed together in what I see as Mekas' attempt to gain some hold of that dimension, to…
☆"These are some images and some sounds recorded by someone in exile."☆
Jonas Mekas continues his film diaries, once again with a firm theme of "displaced persons" like himself -- best exemplified in his earlier picture half the length of this one, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania -- in the 1976 work Lost, Lost, Lost. Here, Mekas focuses on his time in America from 1949 to 1963 as a newly-arrived immigrant along with his brother Adolfas, to a country welcoming on its surface but decidedly ambivalent to his plight. "What am I doing in America now?" he asks in the film. A pause. "There was no answer."
Recall from Reminiscences the journey of the Mekas brothers from Europe: displaced…
Lost not in story, but in feeling, vignettes so personal to one can mistranslate to another
This is cinematic art in its purest form. Lost, Lost, Lost was shot over several decades and has a very raw feel to it. It doesn't feel very cohesive at first but it remains beautiful and thought-provoking.
"I don't want to look back. Not yet. Or not... anymore."
Jonas Mekas has a way to soothe the soul.
الشعور الذي انتابني هنا حالة التخدير هذه
حالة التخدير في جميع افلام جوناس ميكاس حالة لا مثيل لها
امام الشاشة اشاهد الزمن وهو يجتاح كل هالوجوه المتراكمة،
وهو يجتاح الطرقات، المارة ، المنازل والاماكن،
وهو يجتاح وجووه اصدقاء جوناس ، وهو يجتاح وجه و جسد جوناس
لا احد يستطيع ايقاف الزمن ، لا احد لا احد عدا صوت جوناس المنتظر
بعد كل جزء من اجزاء الفيلم ، صوت جوناس وتعبيره العفوي عن الحياة
عن كل مايجري صوته الذي اعطى التوازن الكامل للفيلم
هذا الفيلم هو مكان للحظات الجميلة فقط
جوناس يتعمد ازاحة كل ما يفسد اللحظات الجملية
حتى وقت منفاه، الابتعاد المؤلم عن بيته عن اهله عن وطنه
صور هنا بطريقة ملطفة بطريقة بريئة جدا مثل شدة براءة جوناس
ومثل براءة السينما، نعم السينما بريئة ولكن البشر ، البشر ليسوا كذلك.