Month: September 2019

Jonas Mekas and John F. Kennedy’s Camera

Jackie Kennedy at her home, 1970 . In: A dance with Fred Astaire / Jonas Mekas ; [edited by Johan Kugelberg, Jonas Mekas, and Sebastian Mekas]. – New York : Anthology Editions, 2017, p. 318.

Jonas Mekas:

Jackie Kennedy was one of the most special women I was privileged to know in my life. I do not mean her position in society: I mean her intelligence, a very special intelligence with a deep sensitivity, and her elegance, her style, her generosity, her simple, straight, magic human quality. I could go on and on.

[…]

This event took place the very first time I visited Jackie in her Fifth Avenue home. Somehow the talk turned to John F. Kennedy and movies. “You know,” Jackie said, “just a few months before he died somebody gave him as a present a little 8mm movie camera. He always carried it in the pocket of his raincoat. You know, as I am thinking now, it must still be there.

She went to the closet and found a beige raincoat and there it was! In the raincoat pocket there was a small 8mm movie camera! She brought it to me. I regret I do not remember now the brand of the camera.

“He did some filming. But he never finished the roll. It’s still in the camera,” she said.

She put the camera back into the pocket of the raincoat.[1]

[1]A dance with Fred Astaire / Jonas Mekas ; [edited by Johan Kugelberg, Jonas Mekas, and Sebastian Mekas]. – New York : Anthology Editions, 2017, p. 319

The Story of BATUN Presented at the National Library of Lithuania

The author Sirje Okas Anso (on the left) was present at the event.

On September 12, a book The Story of BATUN—Baltic Appeal to the United Nations (1966-1991), published in 2018 by Estonian-born Sirje Okas Ains was presented at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. BATUN is the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian movement founded in the US in the late 1960s, which main goal was to seek independence for the Baltic States and their membership in the United Nations.

A collection of documents presents the historical narrative of the Baltic States and the successful collaboration between the three nations. The author Sirje Okas Ains offers an interesting narrative based on documents, photos and personal insights. The book also contains a collection of archival documents which include not only documents testifying to various BATUN’s activities, but also organization’s correspondence with ambassadors, materials distributed and produced by the organization, and examples of the BATUN’s newsletter.

Sirje Okas Ains is an artist and a longtime member of BATUN. She grew up in Argentina and graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. In 1968, she moved with her family to the United States, where she studied arts at New York University. In 1969, she became actively involved in BATUN becoming a member of the board. Later she was delegated to the United Nations missions and the UN Human Rights Committee.

The Lithuanian Minister of Culture Visited the United States

The Minister of Culture visited the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago.

In the early September, the Lithuanian Minister of Culture, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, visited New York and Chicago. In New York, the Minister met with the director of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Jonathan Brent. They discussed the cooperation between the Institute and Lithuania and other relevant issues in preparation for next year’s commemoration of Vilna Gaon (born Elijah ben Solomon Zalman) and Lithuanian Jewish history.

The Minister participated in the Litvak Days organized for the first time in New York and Chicago on the initiative of the Consulate of the Republic of Lithuania in NY. The event included a public lecture and three debates. In New York, Kvietkauskas, along with writer Tomas Venclova and Prof. Saulius Sužiedėlis participated in the discussion “Challenges of Multiculturalism in Contemporary Lithuania.”

While in New York, Kvietkauskas also visited one of the world’s largest American avant-garde film archives, Anthology Film Archives, founded in the early 1960s by Lithuanian-American Jonas Mekas. The Minister participated in the opening of the exhibition of the Lithuanian American artist Vytautas Ignas and met with representatives of the Lithuanian Alliance of America and the Lithuanian National Foundation.

In Chicago, Kvietkauskas paid a visit at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, and met with the leaders of the Lithuanian World Center in Lemont. At the UIC, where students can learn Lithuanian language as part of their academic curriculum, the Minister participated in a discussion “The Narratives of Pluralism: Lithuania’s Past and Present” and met with the students of the Lithuanian Culture course.