Jonas Mekas – Images are Real

In Support of The Jonas Mekas Centennial Program – Mekas 100!

“Jonas Mekas – Images are Real”
November 9, 2022 to February 26, 2023
Mattatoio Museum
Rome, Italy


Jonas Mekas 100! – the international program of exhibitions and events
celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Lithuanian-born filmmaker’s birth –
comes to Italy with “Images are Real”, an exhibition and series of events
curated by the duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, who have accompanied Mekas on a
number of art projects from Venice to New York, Seoul and Reykjavik.

Promoted by Roma Culture and the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in partnership
with the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, “Images are Real” is on display in
Pavilion 9b at the Mattatoio di Roma.  The exhibition takes a retrospective
look at the sixty year artistic career of Jonas Mekas (born 1922 – 2019)
within a beyond the history of avant-garde cinema.  Presenting a broad
selection of works ranging from the 1960’s to the late 2010’s, the project
sets out to explore the Lithuanian filmmaker’s work as a form of resistance
to human brutality, a quest of happiness through which to cope with the
uncertainty of the present.  

The title of the exhibition is a quote from the film “Out-takes from the
Life of a Happy Man” in which the artist’s off-screen voice reflects:
“Memory is gone, but the images are here, and the images are real!”.
Celebrating Jonas Mekas’s centenary, therefore, does not just mean
celebrating the memory of a figure who has inspired three generations of
artists and filmmakers, it means also, indeed above all, keeping alive the
perpetual present of a filmmaking practice that is at once both individual
and political.

www.jonasmekas100.com