Mocuments | October

Mocuments is yearly series of video art and film screenings and discussions organised by Kaunas Artists’ House, exploring the relationship between history and fiction, asking the question, what do we call a politically engaged work? Where can we draw the line between propaganda and the political?

October 19th, 7 p.m. Kaunas Artists’ House Gallery, Putvinskio g. 56-1.
Spectres | 2011 | Sven Augustijnen | Belgium | N-13 | 103 min.
French with English subtitles.

The film will be presented by educator Kamal Ahamada.

Fifty years after his assassination, Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo, is back to haunt Belgium. Through commemorations and encounters, the top-ranking Belgian civil servant who was in Elisabethville on that tragic day of 17 January 1961 attempts to exorcise the ghosts of the past. To the sound of “St John Passion” by J.S. Bach, “Spectres” immerses us into one of the darkest days of the decolonisation of the Belgian Congo. Examining the biopolitical body, this feature-length film by Sven Augustijnen exposes the fine line separating legitimisation and historiography and the traumatic issue of responsibility and debt.

Screening and discussion series are funded by the Lithuanian Film Centre.

PARTICIPATION AT THE EVENT IS FREE OF CHARGE