As the evenings grow longer, it’s easier to immerse yourself in stories told through the media of literature, cinema, art, dance, or music that bring distant lands closer and reveal the lives of other people. Whether joyful or sad, similar to our own or exotic, each such story teaches us something.
October in Kaunas is the perfect time to seek inspiration in biographies. The contemporary Aura dance festival returns with its 34th edition, the Festival of Stories reawakens the city’s memory after a break, the International Festival of Photography and Media Art draws the attention of artists from all over the world, the socially conscious Inconvenient Films documentary film screenings wake us up, and music continues to play in the Philharmonic and other concert venues. These are all new encounters with heroes who lived decades or centuries ago or perhaps walk alongside us in this world today.
It often happens that the greatest heroes live in the next room, though we don’t always recognize it in time. Are we all capable of handling a legacy bigger than ourselves? Does everyone have to continue the story started by their parents or grandparents? When building our own careers, do we think about how they will be received, carried on, or perhaps ignored by our own children? We discuss these questions with the heroes of this magazine who are inspired by their parents and grandparents but also can be viewed as inspirations themselves.
Jurgis and Ilma Bingelis flew back from Oslo in October. In Kaunas, they presented a memoir, The Unfamiliar Maestro. Petras Bingelis. For them, this book has become a key to the personality of their late father and father-in-law. Eglė Rakauskaitė, who won the National Prize this year, continues to have many good news in her life: her work is included in the collection of the Pompidou Center in Paris, and aRRchyvas dedicated to her father Romualdas Rakauskas is being born next to Anykščiai. German photographer Nina Röder takes photos of her mother to strengthen her bond with her, while Kaunas-based Vytautė Trijonytė is sad that her grandmother burned a bunch of old photographs. Graphic artist Aistė Ramūnaitė invites you to her great-grandfather’s house in Žaliakalnis. Video artist Clemens von Wedemeyer, visiting Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum, reveals why it is necessary to work with complex history. Liucija from Slovenia, who volunteers at the Kaunas Artists’ House, presents her research, in which she interviews Lithuanian artists about how they manage to combine creative work and motherhood.
