"That early fall, in 1957 or '58, one Sunday morning," "we went into the Catskills, into the woods." "We walked through the leaves, beating the leaves with a stick." "We walked up and up, and deeper and deeper." "It was good to walk like that and not to think, not to think anything about the last ten years." "And I was wondering myself that I could walk like this and not to think about the years of war, of hunger, of Brooklyn." "And almost, and maybe, it was for the first time, as we were walking through the woods, that" "early fall day, for the first time I did not feel alone in America." "Like I felt there was the ground, there was earth, and leaves, and trees, and people." "And like I was slowly becoming a part of it." "It was a moment when I forgot m)!"" "home." "This was the beginning oi my new home." ""Hey, I escaped the ropes of time, once more,"" "I said." "I walked the streets of Brooklyn, but the memories," "the smells, the sounds that I was remembering were not from Brooklyn." "Somewhere at the end of Atlantic Avenue, somewhere there they used to have their picnics." "I use to watch them, the old immigrants, and the new ones." "And they looked to me like some sad, dying animals in a place they didn't exactly belong to, in a place" "they didn't recognize." "They were there," "on the Atlantic Avenue, but they were completely somewhere else." "Some footage" "I took with my first Bolex." "I wanted to make a film against war." "I wanted to shout, to shout that there was a war, because I walked the city and I thought nobody knew that there was a war," "I thought nobody knew that there were homes in the world where people cannot sleep, where their door has been kicked in at night," "with the boots of soldiers and the police, somewhere" "where I came from." "But in this city nobody knew it." "I remember you, my friends, from displaced person camp, from the miserable post-war years." "Yes, we are," "we still are displaced persons, even," "even today, and the world is full of us," "every continent" "is full of displaced persons." "The minute we left, we started going home," "and we are still going home." "I am still on my journey home." "We loved you, world, but you did lousy things to us." "Have you... have you ever stood in Times Square and suddenly felt, very close to you and very strong, the smell of a fresh" "bark of a birch tree'?" "My brother said he was a pacifist" "and that he hated war." "So they drafted him into the army, and they took him back to Europe," "back to all the war memories." "So he started eating leaves from the trees" "and they though!" "he was crazy, so they shipped him back to the States." "And there was Mamma, and she was waiting." "She was waiting for" "25 years." "And there was our uncle, who told us to go west:" ""Go, children, west, and see the world."" "And so we went." "And we're still going." "The berries, always berries." "Uogos, berries." "Our uncle, the protestant, reformed protestant, pastor, and a very wise man." "He was a friend of Spengler, and he had all his books there, maybe that's why he told us to go west." "The house, the attic in which I lived during my studies." "And I had a rope dangling to slide down in case the Germans bang at the door." "And as we were approaching, closer and closer" "to the places we knew so well," "suddenly, in front of us" "W658W a forest." "I didn't recognize the places." "There were no trees when we left." "We planted small seedlings all around, yes, and now the little seedlings had grown up, into big, large trees." "Our home, our house was still there," "and the cat met us." "So what does one do when one comes home after 25 years?" "Of course, we went to the well to drink some water." "The water that tastes like no other water." "Oh , cool water of Semeniskiai!" "No wine ever tasted better anywhere." "OK very good." "Today is August 7th, it's our first morning in Semeniskiai." "And we're having breakfast." "Mamma complains that her memory is failing." "She can't find a spoon." "She hasten and she can'!" "find a single one this morning." ""The only thing to know about the old age," she said," ""is that you can't find your spoons when you get old."" "Brother Petras arrives." "We talk about the trees, how tall they have become, how much they have grown." "We decide to go to the fields, to see how the work is done these days." "So we go, and Petras leads us, and he's very excited, he wants to show everything." "And there, high on the combine, sits Jonas Ruplenas, with whom I went to school together, who used to take care of cows and sheep in the fields." "And there he sits now, and he's so big, and the machine is so big, and the fields are so wide." "Brother Kostas sings a song about the collective farm work, we all join in." "Oh, these personal ramblings..." "Of course you'd like to know something about the social realities." "How is the life going there, in the Soviet Lithuania?" "But what do I know about it?" "I'm a displaced person on my way home," "in search for my home, retracing bits of past, looking for some recognizable traces of my past." "The time in Semeniskiai remains suspended for me remains suspended until my return." "NOW, slowly." "It's beginning to move again." "Later we all go to Petras' place and so it goes, late into the night." "When we had enough, when we had enough of it, brother Petras brought some hay" "from the barn, and there we slept." "In the morning, brother Petras took the hay back to the barn, he was sort of hiding." "He said, "Don't tell them in America that we sleep in hay."" "He thought I!" "was very funny." "That evening, the collective farm Vienybe, which means togetherness, gave us a reception." "The collective farm embraces six or seven... a dozen former villages." "Our mother is telling about the terrible post-war years and how the police was waiting for a year for me to come home, they thought I was..." "joined the partisans" "Every night, the police was waiting behind the house in the bushes, for me to come home." "And the dog used to bark and bark." "But I was young, and naive, and patriotic, and I was editing this underground newspaper, directed against Nazis, Nazi Germany, and I had this typewriter that I was hiding in a stack of wood outside, by the house." "And a thief, one night, snooping for something, found it and stole it." "And it was only a question of days, or hours, when Germans would catch him." "I had very little time to disappear and it's at this point that our wise uncle told us:" ""Go, children, west, see the world and come back."" "False papers were made for us to go to the University of Vienna and study there, and there we went." "The only thing was that we never got there." "Germans directed our train towards Hamburg and we ended in the slave camps of the Nazi Germany." "We goofed around, and Kostas came home early today from his granary." "We walked around the houses, we touched some of the things we used to work with." "Of course, they're not used anymore in the fields," "but it had memories for us," "as we were mowing the grass around the houses." "It was real enough," "ES a memory." "By the fence, in the junkyard, we found an old plough." "It's not used now and brother Kostas said to me," ""OK, now you pull it!"" "And he was beating me." "He said, "Now you film this and take it to show the Americans how miserably we live."" "Of course he thought it was very funny." "We decide to go to see the old school house." "We all went to the same school." "Long, deep, cold winters, through the fields, through the frozen rivers, through the forests, we walked to the school, with our noses frozen, our faces burning in cold wind and snow." "But ah, those were beautiful days!" "Those were winters I'll never forget." "Where are you now, my old childhood friends?" "How many of you are alive?" "Where are you scattered?" "Through the graveyards, through the torture rooms, through the prisons, through the labor camps of the western civilization." "But I see your faces, just like they used to be." "They never changed in my memory." "They remain young, it's me who is getting older." "It's a new song, it's about somebody who's far away" "and he says, "Oh, mother, how I long to see you again." "I hope the long grey road will lead me home," "will lead me soon home again."" "This morning, the fire was slow to start." "Our mother cooks outside, she doesn't like to cook indoors." "It's too hot and too smoky." "She likes outdoors." "And the fire just didn't want to come this morning." "So she gathered some dry branches and some leaves and some newspapers." "I kept blowing at it, and I blew a!" "it, and it took a very, very longtime." "But finally we got it going." "Yes, they were waiting for you every night, for more than a year, behind the bathhouse." "The dogs used to bark every night, she said." "All the women of my village that I remember from my childhood, they always reminded me of the birds, sad autumn birds," "as they fly over the fields," "crying sadly." "You led hard and sad lives the women of my childhood." "The day I was leaving, it was raining." "The airport was wet." "It was sad." "It was funny." "I was looking at the legs." "I remembered my old friend Narbutas who said," ""as long as a man is watching woman's legs, he shouldn't marry."" "So I guess I won't marry soon." "In Elmshorm, Adolf as is lying exactly in the spot where our beds used to be, in the labor camp." "When we asked some people around, nobody remembered that there was a labor camp there." "Only the grass remembers." "One of the factories, the Gebriider Neunert, where they used to take us to work, together with French, Russian, Italian war prisoners, is still there." "It's the bench I used to work, where I was beaten up for working too slow and talking back." "The foreman recognized Adolf as." "We spoke about this and that." "He was a young, a good foreman." "In March '45, we escaped and ran to Denmark and we were caught near the border of Denmark, and while they were shipping us back, we escaped OFICG ITIOTG, and for the last three months of war," "we hid ourselves in Schleswig-Holstein, on a farm." "Outside, while my brother was looking and remembering and thinking back, there were children around." "They thought it was very funny, these strange people coming to see here, standing, looking." "They thought it was really funny." "Auslénder." "Oh, yes, run, children, run." "I was also running once from here, but I was running for my life." "I hope you'll never have to run for your life." "Run, children, run." "I was watching Peter and I caught myself envying him." "Envying his peace, his serenity." "His being just in himself with things around him, with things that he has always been with, at home, in place, in time, in mind, in culture." "Annette." "She walks through New York and Vienna with the same optimism and courage." "I admire her," "I admire Annette for making culture into her roots, into her life." "And there is Hermann Nitsch, pursuing his vision, without giving in an inch." "And heroically." "And Ken Jacobs, who has the courage" "to remain a child in the purity of his seeing and his ecstasies." "No, I never got to Vienna that time, but some strange circumstances pulled me back," "much later." "And there I am," "HOW." "Slowly, I begin when I walk through Vienna with Peter, as we talk, as we go to the galleries, monasteries and Demel, through the wine cellars," "and through the wine groves," "I begin to believe again in the indestructibility of the human spirit, in certain qualities, in certain standards." "They have been established by man," "through many thousands of years, and they'll be here when we are gone." "We stood there, that August evening in Kremsmillnster." "A few friends on the roof of a 1200 year-old monastery, and the evening was coming, the sun was setting." "A blue light was falling over the landscape." "It was very, very peaceful, our hearts and our minds elated." "On our way back home to Vienna, from far away, we saw a fire." "Vienna was burning." "The fruit market was on fire." "Peter said it was a pity." "It was his market." "He said it was the most beautiful market in Vienna." "He said the city probably set it on fire, just to get rid of it." "They want a modern market now."