I Had Nowhere To Go

7^th October 2016 9.00pm at BFI Southbank (NFT)

I Had Nowhere To Go reveals the deepest thoughts of Jonas Mekas during the dark years in which he fled Lithuania and the German war camps before emigrating to Brooklyn in 1949 where he would make his name. Mekas is now dubbed the godfather of avant-garde cinema.

This is not a film, it’s an experience. It is an autopsy into a lost soul. A dissection of a broken man in search of the answer. An audiobook, laced with lashings of metaphoric visuals. This story runs parallel with many of his peers – a story of a displaced generation. This is compelling, factual and raw, and like nothing you’ve experienced at the cinema before.

I Had Nowhere To Go is experimental in its approach to film, in both audio and visual respects. To fill the void of visuals with a stunning soundscape is refreshing: as it ebbs and flows, every rattle or explosion rushing through is more intense than the last. Roughly three quarters of the picture leaves the viewer quite literally in the dark, as the screen lays black whilst Mekas dictates the influential moments throughout his post-war struggle.

The plot is fractured, as each event he recalls are scattered years apart, further fuelling the perception of sheer confusion and isolation during those times – each memory is jarring, if not painfully honest. However, throughout the piece Mekas is portrayed as a man who, no matter how difficult times get, is grateful for all the beauty in the world as it could have been very, very different.

I Had Nowhere To Go is not a movie which will break records at box office. It’s not designed to be. This is a story which needs to be told before it simply cannot be told anymore. It is delivered taking creative risk and due caution, to create an altogether mesmerising alternative piece of film.

Jack Cloves-Hayden

I Had Nowhere To Go does not have a UK release date yet.

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