A Place of One's Own: Returns to Eastern European Homelands in Autobiographical Documentaries

• In Event: Space, Place, and Mediated Memory in Baltic and East European Cinema

Abstract

My presentation intends to compare the autobiographical film diaries of two filmmakers, Jonas Mekas and Marian Marzyński, with a special focus on the films in which they come back to their Eastern European homelands. Mekas, considered the first avant-garde filmmaker to create the “conscious diary film,” began documenting his life after fleeing Lithuania during World War II and resettling in the United States. His most renowned works, such as Walden. Diaries, Notes, and Sketches (1969), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), and Lost Lost Lost (1976), reflect his personal journey of displacement and the ongoing negotiation of identity. Similarly, Marzyński, who fled Poland in 1968 due to the antisemitic campaign, also adapted the film diary format, centering on themes of exile and disrupted identity in his work.
Drawing from Hamid Naficy's Accented Cinema, in my presentation I will explore the shared experience of emigration from Eastern Europe to the USA and its role in shaping the film diary format. Both filmmakers use the personal, diaristic mode of cinema to process their feelings of displacement and reconnect with their homelands. Through their return to Lithuania and Poland in their films, Mekas and Marzyński assert the significance of territorial belonging, despite the fluid, deterritorialized nature of postmodern life. By analyzing the ways in which these filmmakers portray coming back to their homelands, I will argue that the autobiographical film diaries prove to be excellent examples of the tight link between place, memory, and indentity.

Author

• Łukasz Kiełpiński, U of Warsaw (Poland)