ART VILNIUS – CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2020

ART VILNIUS – CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2020

ArtVilnius’20 opens this Friday, October 2 in Vilnius. During the three days of the highly popular contemporary art fair, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center will present its project “Glimpses” from the Jonas Mekas film archives.

Mekas has said, “When I film, I don’t make movies. I’m just filming, filming, filming.”

Jonas Mekas has created more than 160 avant-garde cinema portraits, the 5-hour film Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR, the short clip series 365 Days for each day of the year and the series A Thousand and One Nights.

Jonas Mekas has been credited with inventing the diary form of filmmaking. It might even be said that he was one of the first vloggers in the world! His diaries are composed of glimpses of everyday life that are permeated with poetic sensuality and subtlety. Although films made in the improvisational manner characteristic of Mekas’ style (short non-linear pieces, bursts of color and lots of movement as though made with a shaking camera) may be incomprehensible and unacceptable to many ordinary viewers, his work has influenced and continues to influence the most noteworthy filmmakers in the world.

JMVMC presents excerpts from Jonas Mekas’ most famous films and invites viewers to immerse themselves in his unique glimpses at personal moments of beauty and his celebration of life and joy.

Guns of the Trees (1962)

The Brig (1964)

Walden (Diaries, Notes, and Sketches) (1969)

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971–72)

Lost Lost Lost (1976)

Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992)

Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man (2012)