FRAGMENTS OF PARADISE (2022) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: K.D. Davidson
The long, eventful life of avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who escaped from Lithuania toward the end of World War Two, having pissed off both the Germans and the Russians, spent four years in a displaced persons camp, and eventually landed in New York City, where he picked up a 16mm movie camera and spent the next 60 years shooting film. Mekas never cared about technique and his movies show it, but he took his camera everywhere, and whenever something he found interesting passed in front of his lens, he filmed it. John Waters, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch are among those he influenced and inspired, and they all turn up here as witnesses. Viewers with a minimal interest in the movies Mekas made might still want to take a look at this one.
