Film scholar Dara Waldron gives a glowing review of Jonas Mekas: Shiver of Memory in the Spring Representation Edition of Millennium Film Journal. This issue explores the intersection between experimental film and politics, showcasing artists and writers with acute political awareness and their influences.
Delpeut’s book length essay grapples with controversies regarding Mekas’s memories of his youth in Lithuania, where atrocities of The Holocaust occurred, and his subsequent legacy as a filmmaker. Delpeut follows Mekas through films, diaries, public performances, and finally, his testimony given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in which the author encounters an unexpected impasse in Mekas’s abilities to witness.
“The [Second World] War, and the shadow the Holocaust and the Soviet Purges still casts across the world, the
totalitarianism Hannah Arendt unpacked with such verve, are still prevalent. This moment in history still casts a shadow over our world. Delpeut’s essay is a penetrating reminder of the war’s lingering shadow: we might believe we escape it when we are standing under it. Shiver of Memory is about memory and war trauma, but also artistic integrity and authority. It is a reminder not to turn the life of an artist into a myth but to grasp its intrepid messiness. Perhaps this is the best conclusion to be drawn from Delpeut’s fastidious and probing essay.”
—Dara Waldron