2021 / 106 min / Germany / Documentary

Directed by Peter Sempel

In Memory & Thankfulness, Jonas Mekas (24.12.1922 – 23.01.2019)

A personal film about lithuanian refugee Jonas Mekas, who, in New York, became ‘father of American avant garde’, a great inspirer for independent cinema, poetry and people.

Filmed between 2015 and 2020, mainly in Brooklyn, with son Sebastian, and many friends,… at auction for the Harry Smith-Heaven & Earth Library; …then visiting Hamburg (Golden Poodle), Berlin, Leipzig, Kassel(documenta), for film- and book-presentations. Some flashbacks, and footage from Jonas-films, about “home”, feeling lost, and memory, then again with extreme positive energy.

And very alive memorial-events at St. Marks Church, Anthology Film Archives in East-Village, and in Birzai, the place of Jonas’ childhood, in the fields of Lithuania, with a silver cow.

Jonas often laughed: “I am a farmer boy.”