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.

Gerda Paliušytė (b. 1987) is a Vilnius-based artist and curator. Her films tend to engage with a range of cultural agents, including historical and popular characters, focusing on the ways they modify the cultural landscape of specific places. Since 2018 Paliušytė has been curating the video art section of Meno Avilys Cinematheque.

The program “Pioneers: Lithuanian Documentaries Directed by Women” presents three newly restored documentaries created by female directors: Antanina Pavlova, Diana and Kornelijus Matuzevičius, and Janina Lapinskaitė. The films of the program, curated by Dr. Lina Kaminskaitė, unfold by developing original themes, distinct documentary genres, and different aesthetic means. Pavlova’s observational documentary, The Birth of a Character (1967), captures the everyday life of kindergarten children. A Local (2000) by Matuzevičius explores the hybrid identity of a Klaipėda region resident, Hilda Spalvienė. Lapinskaitė’s Venus with a Cat (1997) offers three portraits of sitters in which different life experiences and bodies transpire. This program aims to draw attention to little-known films of the first female filmmakers in Lithuania.

Dr. Lina Kaminskaitė is a film and culture historian, audiovisual media researcher, Associate Professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater, and the Head of the Department of Art History and Theory. In Meno Avilys, she curates archival film programs and initiates film studies, including the national digitization of audiovisual heritage, the project Sinemateka.lt, and an inquiry into gender equality in the Lithuanian film industry. Kaminskaitė is the co-author and editor of three books: Episodes for the Last Film: Director Almantas Grikevičius (with Dr. Aurimas Švedas, 2012), Cinema in Soviet Lithuania: System, Films, Directors (with Dr. Anna Mikonis-Railienė, 2015), and In Focus: Women in the Lithuanian Film (with Dr. Natalija Arlauskaitė, 2022).

The short Lithuanian documentaries restored by Meno Avilys and presented in this programme cover a wide range of topics and diverse cinematic techniques. The programme features three films, in which the authors look at and listen to injured people and animals, exploiting the camera as an engine for empathy. The voice in the background transforms from informative to exaltedly poetic, ultimately becoming quiet and gentle.

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, born in Lithuania in 1983, works as a filmmaker and theatre director. She explores the tension between documentary and fiction, performing and being, filming and seeing. Her recent collaborations include the documentary Acid Forest, the opera Have a Good Day!, and the installation Sun and Sea.

The programme presents four diary-like documentary video works centred around fragments from the daily life of their creators. The moments captured in these films are not only melancholic but also surreal, emerging from the specific atmosphere and time of the city where they were documented. Alongside the experimental video works, the programme features "Portraits of Ourselves" (1994), an anthropological film by Laimė Kiškūnaitė and Karla Gruodis. The film was made together with the students of the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute who participated in Gruodis’s seminar on feminist theory. "Portraits of Ourselves" are video portraits filmed by the students, presenting not themselves but women that they found interesting, including writer Zita Čepaitė and teenage girls from special care homes in Vilnius. Some of the films selected for the programme were created a little later than the usual early Lithuanian video art but were chosen because of the media in which they were created (DVD, VHS, or cine film) or the themes they explore, associated with the early video art period.

Gerda Paliušytė (b. 1987) is a Vilnius-based artist and curator. Her films tend to engage with a range of cultural agents, including historical and popular characters, focusing on the ways they modify the cultural landscape of specific places. Since 2018 Paliušytė has been curating the video art section of Meno Avilys Cinematheque.

Three Lithuanian cinematic documents. Three filmmakers developing the dialogue about urban, nature and human time. Time Passes through the City (Lith. Laikas eina per miestą) by Almantas Grikevičius is one of the most exceptional experiments of Lithuanian film and photography reminiscent in its form of the classic film Le Jetee by Chris Marker. The etude Reflections (Lith. "Atspindžiai") by Henrikas Šablevičius is an abstract and highly personal meditation on the path of life as well as the meaning of being. Slowly falling Autumn Snow (Lith. "Rudens sniegas") by Vladas Navasaitis reminds us of a never-ending and eternal flow of time; the flow that has also become the central pivot of the programme.

The program is curated by film director Aistė Žegulytė, who is working with documentaries for over ten years. Her first feature-length documentary Animus Animalis premiered at the prestigious International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. Currently, the director is focusing on her new documentary Biodestructors.