is not so interesting, though it's material of historical importance about immigrant life. It should not be destroyed, though it's slowly rotting away . . .
My first experience with
was at Hampshire College in 1973. After the screening some guy in the back row screamed at you, 'Why can't you leave anything alone!' At the time it was sort of jolting. I'd watched the same film and to me it seemed quite lovely, but it had produced this violent response from this other person. Was that unusual?
Until ten years ago, that was a very common reaction to single-frame shooting and to short takes, to the use of overexposures or underexposures, and in general to the work of independent filmmakers. There is less and less of that now, since people have gotten used to this type of film language.
is the earliest edited film in which you seem primarily involved with time, in which your return to the past is one of the major themes. There are mentions of the past in
but not a direct concentrated involvement with it. Was it that you were going to be able to go back to Lithuania, so the whole issue became more frontal for you?
You may be correct. I don't know. It's complicated. The official reaction in the Soviet Union, and all the republics there, is to have no contact with any refugee, exile, DP who left during the war, unless that person is potentially useful to them. I had written already for
a film journal in Moscow. Some Soviets had seen
in Venice, and the editor of
who saw it in New York, wrote a glowing review. The film was invited to the Moscow Film Festival and presented there as an important antimilitary, anticapitalist work. They sent correspondents from Moscow to interview me here, and interviewed my mother in Lithuania. Suddenly I felt I had enough clout to apply for a visa to visit Lithuania. Since I had been invited to the Moscow Film Festival, I thought I would ask to be permitted to go to Lithuania also, to visit my mother.
For over a decade I had not been allowed even to correspond with my mother. I had written some poems against Stalin, so I was a criminal. My brothers were thrown into jail because of me, and my father died earlier than he would have, because of that. My mother's house was watched for years by the secret police. They hoped that one day I'd come home and they'd get me. My mother told me that in 1971. There was not a night, during my visit home, when I wasn't prepared to jump out the window, to run from the police if they decided to come after me. And this in 1971, many years after Stalin's death.
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The Lithuanian government, that part which deals with the arts, saw that I had been favorably received by Moscow, from
to
. So they figured it was okay for them to permit me not only to visit my mother, but, as it turned out, to publish my collected poems. Until then I did not exist for them, officially, that is. Actually, they had mocked me in some articles in the official party paper. They had presented me as an example of a sick and corrupt mind, printing some paragraphs from my writings with words omitted, sentences turned around. That was around 1965. But once Moscow became favorable to me, Lithuania immediately followed suit. Suddenly I could film whatever I wanted. Usually visitors are not permitted to go into villages; they stay around their hotels. I was offered an official film crew to do whatever I wanted, but I said, ''I will be using my Bolex; I don't want any film crews.' They found it strange, but they gave in. They had their own crews around much of the time, making their own film about me and my motherin Cinemascope. They sent me a print, which I have.
I also shot some Moscow footage on that trip, but I haven't used it so far.
When you came to Utica in 1974 or 1975 to show
a woman of Lithuanian background came to the film and seemed very upset about it.
In general, the attitude among the older generation of immigrants is that if you go to visit one of those countries, you are a member of the Communist party, or at best you are a spiritual Communist, you are betraying the cause of those who are fighting for the liberation of Baltic countries. The younger generation, however, go for cultural exchange, on the assumption that the only way to help Lithuania is to go there and inform the people. Otherwise they know nothing, they live in controlled ignorance. So you send books, whatever you can, and when something you send gets therewhich is a miraclesomebody sees it and something happens. The older generation of immigrants is for a complete cutoff, which doesn't help either side.
In
Lithuania under Soviet domination seems relatively comfortable. There are a couple of instances where your brothers joke about what Americans will think; their mood seems to be, 'We're doing pretty well; things are okay.'
Yes. Lithuania is an agricultural republic which produces a lot of food for the rest of the Soviet Union. So it's in a privileged position. To a degree, that is. As long as we do not confuse food with liberty. . . . There, they do not confuse the two. They eat, but they also want liberty. Only Moscow and Washington confuse bread and economic prosperity with liberty.
When the Soviet film representative here in New York insisted on seeing the film, I showed it to him; he hit the ceiling. 'How do you dare
