Association “Bachi da Setola” is proud to present the 16th edition of “PerSe Visioni”, a film, music and arts festival, which will take place from 18 to 25 August 2023 in Polignano a Mare (Italy). This year the festival will kick off with a special introductory event – Glimpses of Paradise | Scorci di Paradiso – to celebrate the life and work of the esteemed filmmaker Jonas Mekas. This event is part of the Jonas Mekas 100! programme and will feature a film screening, guest speakers, and a book exhibition.
Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, a renowned curatorial duo with extensive experience in cinema and contemporary art, will be joining the event as guest speakers. Before the screening, they will provide an illuminating introduction to Jonas Mekas’ life and his seminal body of work. Following the screening, the audience will have the opportunity to engage in a special Q&A session with Francesco Urbano Ragazzi.
In addition to the film screening, the event will feature a special exhibition of books by and about Jonas Mekas. Erika Lastovskytė carefully curated a collection of books that will be on display, allowing visitors to browse and explore Mekas’ written work, philosophy, and artistic journey in greater detail.
The event is free of charge. More information available here.
Lecture and film screening organized in relation to Jonas Mekas Centenary Special Film Program at Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2023, and the first major Andy Warhol exhibition in Kyoto Kyocera museum. Art historian Inesa Brašiškė and film historian Lukas Brašiškis in a talk moderated by prof. Tetsuya Ozaki of Kyoto University of Arts explore the connections between the American pop icon and a Lithuanian-born filmmaker, film critic, curator, and film entrepreneur. Through a close examination of films by Warhol and Mekas as well as their other roles as organizers and archivists, they discuss the impact that Mekas and Warhol had on the avant-garde art and their lasting legacy in the history of film.
The event features a selection of films, including Award Presentation To Andy Warhol, (Jonas Mekas, 1964) and Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (Jonas Mekas, 1990).
For more information on this event visit link here.
On February 11, “Letters to Jonas Mekas. Hot afternoon with Autarkia and Syndicate”, a tribute to the great Lithuanian filmmaker and pioneer of avant-garde cinema, to whom “Images Are Real”, on show at Mattatoio Roma until 23 February 2023, comes to life in the MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma spaces.
For the occasion, the curatorial duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi invites the independent platforms Autarkia and Syndicate.
Led by JL Murtaugh, the two platforms gather a group of friends to celebrate the filmmaker’s powerful cultural legacy. Artists from the new Lithuanian scene pay tribute to their intellectual connection to Mekas and elaborate on a genre to which the artist has long been committed: epistolary and video-letter. In the spaces of the museum video works alternate with live interventions.
For more information on this event visit link here.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jonas Mekas the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb will be screening the magnum opus of this filmmaker “As I Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty”. This is a film-video diary in which Jonas Mekas observes his life in the rhythm of life in New York, subtly pays attention to less visible fragments of everyday life, experiences and emotions. He lets the viewer into his “observation room” and in this way helps us (to) find simplicity in what we see, (to) find the indescribable power of poetry and the need for that power, to feel again the pleasure that a person feels through friendship, seeing the first snow or again next spring.
The first part of the film will be shown on January 25, and the second part of the film on January 26, 2023.
In celebration of the centenary of his birth, Watershed will be screening “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1976), which depicts Jonas and his brother Adolfas’s return journey to their homeland after several decades in the United States and Outtakes from the “Outtakes From The Life Of A Happy Man” (2012), a look back on fragments of unused 16mm footage, combined with immediacy and intuition.
The three chapters of the program seek to tease out new angles of approaching Jonas Mekas’s film works, and expose his filmic practice in the broader context of the American avant-garde scene, emphasizing the impact of Mekas’s intellectual, organizational, and administrative activities; his devotion in fostering new habits of looking at film as an art form; as well as the diversity of contexts that inspired the filmmaker.
Following the premiere in Venice, award-winning KD Davison’s poetic documentary “Fragments of Paradise” will be screened in Turin in remembrance of Jonas Mekas. The organiser Unione culturale is the cultural club where Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill and Taylor Mead presented two extended New American Cinema Expositions in 1967 and 1968. This happening will be evoked during the event.
As part of the exhibition “…Poetry?” agnès b. collection (until January 22, 2023 at La Fab.) and the centenary Jonas Mekas 100! La Fab is pleased to present an afternoon dedicated to the poetry of Jonas Mekas.
Artists: Jackie Raynal, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Fox Magal
Noting the centennial of Lithuanian poet and filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Index will be hosting a three part screening series showing Mekas’ experimental diary film Walden from 1968. Using Walden as a point of departure, the series will spotlight Mekas’ important role as enabler, organizer, connector of people, and devout advocate for art.
This third and final session focuses on Mekas’ dual role as poet and filmmaker. It invites contemporary artists to talk about polyphonic practices; allowing methods and particularities from one medium to bleed into another – linguistics into film, movement into sculpture and sound into image.
Isabella Tjäder, Curator of Learning at Index, will moderate a discussion between artists Agnė Jokšė, Anastasia Sosunova, Andria Nyberg Forshage, Eglė Budvytytė, and Salad Hilowle.
For more information on the sessions please visit link here.
Noting the centennial of Lithuanian poet and filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Index will be hosting a three part screening series showing Mekas’ experimental diary film Walden from 1968. Using Walden as a point of departure, the series will spotlight Mekas’ important role as enabler, organizer, connector of people, and devout advocate for art.
This second session doubles as a release for the most recent issue from Ord&Bild and is generally inspired by Mekas’ journalistic output. In 1954, him and his brother founded Film Culture, a magazine offering a space for in depht writing on avant-garde cinema. A few years later he became the first film critic for the Village Voice, where he continued publishing his weekly column Movie Journal for over a decade.
Isabella Tjäder, Curator of Learning at Index, will moderate a discussion between Jonatan Habib Engqvist, editor at Ord&Bild, and Amin Zouiten + Aron Skoog, founders of Filmögon.
