KIDS ON AIR: A Screening of Lithuanian and Foreign Video Artists
The event visual uses a still from Aurelija Maknytė’s film Camera-Mirror
On March 13th at 7:30 p.m., we invite you to Kids on Air, a screening of Lithuanian and foreign video artists. With this program selected by Gerda Paliušytė, the curator at Meno Avilys, we will start the 2024 edition of Cinematheque events.
The program Kids on Air refuses to associate the child with infantility and depicts the themes of childhood-motherhood-fatherhood without prejudices. Here, the child figure illuminates the structures of society or family and the expectations arising from them.
The screening features the videos of Lithuanian artists Irma Stanaitytė-Bazienė and Aurelija Maknytė, American and British filmmaker and artist Margaret Salmon, and French artist Laure Prouvost.
By exploring the imagination and development of a child, the works reflect the differences between the worlds of adults and children and their mutual interdependence. In the video installation Harping, Irma Stanaitytė-Bazienė records with humor and melancholy how a child’s reality is determined by the outside, for instance, mechanical educational systems. The limits of authenticity are tested in Camera-Mirror, filmed by Aurelija Maknytė with her son; here, the camera becomes a stylizing and binding means of communication.
Gender roles and their performativity also unfold in the program. In Margaret Salmon’s Boy (winter), the artist explores masculinity and gently documents the different physical and psychological stages of male development, ranging from infancy to adolescence, on 35mm film. Meanwhile, Laure Prouvost asks what it even means to try and convey a child’s imagination in today’s ever-changing world.
The event starts with a presentation by writer and curator Monika Kalinauskaitė, dedicated to the roles of children – the expectations and tasks this specific group of society incarnates in a world dominated by adults. The presentation explores the existence of a child via the analysis of works of art, poetry, and personal reflections.
The programme of Lithuanian and foreign video artists, 64 min
Conceptio, Irma Stanaitytė-Bazienė, 1999, 1 min 48 s
Boy (winter), Margaret Salmon, 2022, 32 min 39 s
Camera-Mirror, Aurelija Maknytė, 2006, 11 min 54 s
Harping, Irma Stanaitytė-Bazienė, 2000, 3 min 35 s
Shadow Does, Laure Prouvost, 2023, 12 min 51 s
The films are being screened in the original language with Lithuanian subtitles.
This event aims to re-actualize the content of the digitalized Lithuanian documentary and video art heritage screened via the Meno Avilys’ VOD platform Sinemateka.lt. The event marks the beginning of the 2024 events program of the Meno Avilys’ Cinematheque. This program aims to promote the dissemination of Lithuanian documentary cinema and artists’ films, providing critical access to the phenomena characteristic of Lithuanian audiovisual heritage.
Funded by Lithuanian Film Centre, Vilnius City Municipalit.