During the festival period, director and experimental film specialist Pip Chodorov, Sebastian Mekas son of Jonas Mekas, and director Julius Ziz, who also contributes to the organization of the centennial program “Jonas Mekas 100!”, will visit the festival and share stories about Jonas Mekas’ films. In addition, film critic Youngbin Kwak and critic Yunseong Yoo prepared an in-depth lecture on the questions about Jonas Mekas’ films. In memory of Jonas Mekas, 7 of his films will be shown at the festival.
Jonas Mekas 100! – the international programme of events celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Lithuanian-born filmmaker’s birth – comes to Italy with “Images Are Real”, an exhibition and series of events curated by the duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, who have accompanied Mekas on a number art projects from Venice to New York, Seoul and Reykjavík.
The exhibition takes a retrospective look at the sixty-year career of Jonas Mekas (Biržai 1922 – New York 2019) within and beyond the history of avant-garde cinema. Presenting a broad selection of works ranging from the 1960s to the late 2010s, the project sets out to explore the Lithuanian filmmaker’s work as a form of resistance to human brutality, a quest for happiness through which to cope with the uncertainty of the present.
The title of the exhibition is a quote from the film “Out-takes From the Life of a Happy Man”, in which the artist’s off-screen voice reflects: “Memory is gone, but the images are here, and the images are real!”.
Two simultaneous Jonas Mekas’ film programmes in two main cinematheques of Israel – Tel Aviv Cinemateque and Jerusalem Cinematheque – will be presented for the audience, followed by roundtables and discussions, including local and international interlocutors.
The programmes curated by film critic Dr. Ariel Schweitzer.
For more information on this tribute please visit link here.
“Accidental Poems” is an interdisciplinary music festival, focusing on the artistic heritage of the director and poet Jonas Mekas. Mekas’ movie diaries are considered cornerstones in the history of avant-garde cinema, an artistic practice that made him a key figure in the experimental art scene of New York since the 60s. Though he was not a musician, sound and music played an important role in his movies and within the cultural milieu created around him. “Accidental Poems” is not trying to represent Mekas’ musical work, as such, but to create a happening through the use of his own archival materials, and musical works that relate to him in a direct or imagined way.
The Festival dates are 7-9.12, including three events:
Archival Encounters – Chamber concert | Wednesday 7.12, 20:00 at Rubin Museum. A program of musical compositions that were inspired by Jonas Mekas or by using his poems, selected from the archives of the two music centers.
Temporary Soundtracks – Cross-disciplinary Musical event | Thursday 8.12, 18:00-23:00 at Liebling House. An evening of original audio-visual performances & installations created especially for this evening in response to archival footage of Jonas Mekas.
Artmachines: Thinking with Jonas Mekas’ Practice – Symposium & Workshop | Friday 9.12, 10:00-14:00 at Liebling House.
Please visit this link for more information (in Hebrew) on this programme.
