From June 1 to 7, the theater of the Vilnius Mountain Park will turn into a giant movie theater and will invite students to look at cinema in a different way together with the whole class. Here will be located "China under the stars Junior" is a new daytime open-air film festival for school-aged youth.
The predecessor of this festival is "Cinema under the stars", which is already in its second decade and takes place in summer in the courtyard of the Palace of Lords. The new festival, aimed exclusively at young audiences, students in grades 5-11, will also present iconic films that have written their name in bold letters in the history of cinema.
"While preparing the already traditional "Cinema under the Stars", we often received questions about the suitability of the screenings for young viewers. The screenings are late and the movies are mostly for adults. However, we've seen parents bring teenagers to the screenings, wanting to introduce them to iconic films and a unique movie-going experience. That's how the idea came to organize a festival dedicated only to young people", says Andrė Balžekienė, the head of the festival.
Symbolic place of the festival
"Cinema under the stars. Junior" festival sessions will be held during the day, 10 sessions will be shown in total. The unique location of the event is Kalnų park stage.
"In Lithuania, the cradle of cinema screenings is not anywhere, but in the castles of Vilnius, at the foot of the Mountain Park, which was called the Crooked Castle of Vilnius in ancient times. Here in 1897 July 3 the first cinema screening in Lithuania took place. It is symbolic that, after a break of almost 130 years, cinema screenings are returning to Vilnius Castle, and this year, celebrating Vilnius' 700th birthday, the cinema will be shown exactly where, according to the Lithuanian annals or the Bychovci chronicle, the Iron Wolf howled, in other words, where it was born Vilnius itself, in its ritual cradle - on the stage of Kalnai Park, in the city of the Crooked Castle", says Renaldas Augustinavičius, director of the Directorate of the State Cultural Reserve of Vilnius Castles.
Educational program
In the program, the organizers of the festival include films that inspire the creators of cinema, art and popular culture to this day.
"What children and teenagers are watching now is the continuation of a century of cinema history. And what stories did young people watch twenty or eighty years ago? We want to show them that their favorite films or series would not be the way they are without iconic works that have already become classics, their story solutions, symbols or visual language," says A. Balžekienė.
In order to provide more context and space for reflection, all screenings of the festival will be accompanied by an interactive educational program led by teachers from the Youngblood Film School. "We want to give young people the tools to read movies. In short educations before and after the film, we will invite students not only to follow the story of the film, but also to pay attention to the details of the film language and technical solutions. By deconstructing iconic film works, schoolchildren learn to more consciously appreciate the visual culture surrounding them in everyday life, which is becoming an increasingly important skill in the age of video consumption", says director Kamilė Milašiūtė, head of the Youngblood film school.
Open-air cinema festival "Cinema under the stars. Junior" will be held in Vilnius In the mountain park on June 1-7. Film program - coming soon.
