Culture
If you have a passion for literature, art, music or films of a specific country, you can probably tell much about the country and its people even if you have never been there. Can you tell anything about Lithuania? Not yet? Then, here is some information about our culture – art, cinema, music, and theatre.
ART
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You will be surprised at how many art galleries – public and private, traditional and contemporary – there are in Vilnius, a town with population of slightly over half a million, alone, and just think of the whole of Lithuania! Nearly all of the galleries change expositions regularly, thus offering the possibility to see works of many local artists representing different time-periods and styles. |
National Art Gallery Photo from lithuaniantravel.com |
If you are interested in the contemporary art, you are welcome at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), which offers demonstrations of installations, visual arts, performances by artists from Lithuania and the rest of the world. The CAC has a permanent exposition of George Mačiūnas Fluxus Cabinet. George (Lith. Jurgis) Mačiūnas, one of the pioneers of the famous movement that had many followers, created mainly in New York, USA, but was born in Lithuania.
CINEMA
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Once you have watched at least some of the works by Lithuanian filmmakers, you will surely be able to tell a Lithuanian film from others. Lithuanian filmmaking school is distinguished by its ability to look deep into a human soul. Certainly, works of new generation filmmakers differ greatly from what their predecessors saw and tried to show, but both have won international recognition. For instance, film director Arūnas Matelis has won two prizes at the Silverdocs and Brooklyn Festivals in USA, the prestigious Directors Guild of America Award, and awards at the Amsterdam, Madrid and Leipzig Film Festivals, for his full-length documentary under the title “Before Flying Back to the Earth“ telling about children hospitalised with leukaemia and the lessons of love, faith and the strength of mind learned in the hospital. He was also among 61 nominees for the Academy Award (Oscar) in the category of the Best Foreign Language Film. The name of Jonas Mekas, who is often called the Godfather of American Avant-Garde Cinema, is also famous world-wide. This filmmaker of the Lithuanian descent, who lives and works in New York, has co-founded the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. You are welcome to visit Jonas Mekas Visual Art Center in Lithuania. |
Jonas Mekas, Father of Avant-Garde Cinema Photo by A. Aleksandravičius
Film director Arūnas Matelis Photo by M. Buckner / Getty Images |
THEATER & MUSIC
It is natural that the absolute majority of professional theatres are concentrated in Vilnius; however, theatre is also still alive in other, smaller towns of the country. Nearly all of the theatres regularly go on tours and therefore have devotees across the world.
For instance, Eimuntas Nekrošius is always welcome on Italian theatre and opera stages, Rimas Tuminas is particularly popular in Northern Europe and Russia, and Oskaras Koršunovas is a must in the Avignon and Edinburgh theatre festivals. No less popular are highly modern dance theatres.
The best opera houses and concert halls of the world are more than happy to have opera star Violeta Urmana perform, Mūza Rubackytė delights her audience from all over the world by heady piano melodies and many talented singers from Lithuania reap laurels in international contests, where they perform not only the best pieces of classical, but also Lithuanian music.
