Program for the Jonas Mekas centenary commemoration.
Programmed by The Film Gallery to celebrate the artist’s centenary, the exhibition To New York with Love (from August 25th to August 28th) presents 21 offset lithographs and the screening of Jonas Mekas’ film Walden (Diaries, Notes and Sketches) (1968).
Screening of Jonas Mekas’ AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY, I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY, August 28th at 2pm.
Traduire Mekas is a group translation program for Jonas Mekas’ poems in French, supervised by the Centre international de poésie de Marseille. The program consists of a seminar which will take place over two years at regular intervals. The seminar will bring together, in the order stated, groups of Lithuanian to French translators followed by French-speaking poets with experience of group translation work.
Participants: Stéphane Bouquet (writer, poet and translator, scriptwriter and film critic), Jean-Baptiste Cabaud (poet and translator), Roxana Hashemi (poet and translator), Anne Portugal (poet and translator), Ainis Selena (translator), Marielle Vitureau (writer, translator, correspondent for Radio France Internationale and Courrier international in the Baltic States).
CORRESPONDANCE : JONAS MEKAS ET J.L. GUERIN by José Luis Guerin and Jonas Mekas (FIDMarseille 2011)
“After Abbas Kiarostami and Victor Erice, the CCCB in Barcelona has repeated the experience with this video correspondence between Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerin. Both travel, both work at home, both reflect on their practice and the world around them in relation to their common obsession with filmmaking. Admiration and respect, Europe and the United States, springtime here and springtime there, seriousness and “joie de vivre”. Crossed self-portraits that are addressed in images and sounds, and resolutely intended for everyone.” (Jean-Pierre Rehm)
Septembre 15th at 8:30pm, LOST LOST LOST – 1949-1963, 1976 / 180′
“A filmed diary of a poet in exile who wistfully observes the bustling daily life of New York in the 1950s. “These six reels trace a period of despair, of desperate attempts to put down roots in this new soil, to create new memories. (…) I try to show what an exiled person feels, what I felt during those years. They have deactivated the emotional state and the interior of a “displaced person” who has not yet forgotten his country of birth nor found his new homeland. The sixth reel marks a transition, one starts to feel peace, I start to find moments of happiness. It is the beginning of a new life.” – Jonas Mékas
With Cécile Tourneur, Ph.D. in History and Aesthetics of Cinema.
Septembre 16th at 8:30pm, Short films by Jonas Mekas
ZEFIRO TORNA OU SCENES DE LA VIE DE GEORGE MACIUNAS – 1992 / 34 min
CHANSONS DE VOYAGE – 1981 / 23 min
WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN – 2003 / 15 min
LE CINEMA N’A PAS 100 ANS – 1996 / 3 min
With Cécile Tourneur, Ph.D. in History and Aesthetics of Cinema.
Septembre 17th, at 6:30pm, AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY, I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY – 2000 / 288′
On the occasion of Jonas Mekas’ centenary, the world and Lithuania commemorate the life and work of one of the most important cultural figures of Lithuania in the 20th and 21st centuries. Considered the “godfather of avant-garde cinema”, Jonas Mekas was a friend of Jerome Hill, who was invited to Camargo on several occasions, where he made some of his greatest works. To celebrate this anniversary, Camargo proposes a special programme on Sunday September 18th, in partnership with Art-O-Rama, Re:Voir, The Film Gallery, Videodrome 2, CIPM and FIDMarseille.
5pm : Bilingual reading as part of Traduire Mekas, a group translation program of Jonas Mekas’ poems into French, initiated by the Centre International de Poésie de Marseille (CIPM)
6:30pm : Concert performance, A sound creation inspired by the Lithuanian-American experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas, composed by Arturas Bumšteinas, a composer and resident at the Camargo Foundation whose work on More Music for Jonas was inspired by the films of the Lithuanian filmmaker. The voiceover from Mekas’ 1972 film Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania was used as background for the music.
With Arturas Bumšteinas (composing, conception), Sébastien Boin (artistic and musical direction of the Ensemble C Barré), Sylvain Kassap (clarinettes), Matthias Champon (flugelhorn), Elodie Soulard (accordeon), Lucie Grugier (cello), Charlotte Testu (doublebass)
Free admission upon reservation : rsvp@camargofoundation.org
Residency in partnership with the Lithuanian Cultural Institute and C Barré. With the support of the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, within the framework of France Relance, and the technical support of GMEM.