November 13-15 literary festival "Vilniaus lapai" for the fifth time will invite readers to meet the most interesting and famous Lithuanian and foreign writers and artists from other fields. The theme of this year's festival is boundaries: fans of literature will have the opportunity to see how literature transcends its own boundaries and combines with visual, music, theater and other arts, even entering the popular culture of entertainment clubs.
"This year, the theme of boundaries prevails throughout our program - participating authors of literature and other arts test and talk about the expanding, surmountable boundaries that are traditionally set for genres. Our guests this year question the boundaries of genres, attitudes, subcultures and try to move the boundaries of literature to wider territories. In addition, this year's festival is taking place with restrictions due to COVID-19 - we are ready for various scenarios: we plan to organize the festival both live and virtually - this is also an expansion of the festival's boundaries", says Rūta Kačkutė, the initiator and manager of the festival.
The festival will begin with an evening with the writer Rimanta Kmita - literary critic, doctor of humanitarian sciences, poet and prose writer. His novel "Pietinia kronikas" (Tyto alba, 2016), written in Šiauliai colloquialism, gained incredible popularity among readers. The novel has been translated into German and Ukrainian, and the director Eglė Vertelytė is currently making a movie based on it. This autumn, R. Kmita presents to the readers his latest novel "Remyga" (Tyto alba, 2020), the setting of which is the writer's hometown of Šiauliai, but this time the author invites you to travel to a slightly earlier period, 1988-1993.
On Friday, November 13, at the "Kas Kas" bar, the tenth "Literarium" organized by Aldona Vilutytė will continue the evening of the festival. This event, where the duets of actors and poets meet: Marius Povilas Elijas Martynenko and Aušra Giedraitytė; Mindaugas Nastaravičius and Karolis Kasparevičius; Lina Buividavičiūtė and Gabrielė Ladygaitė; Balys Ivanauskas and Artūras Dubaka (Theatre P). The trio of improvisational music will play: Paulius Vaškas (guitar), Gediminas Stepanavičius (double bass), Kazimieras Jušinskas (saxophones). As always, this event will be free of charge.
On Saturday, November 14, the meeting "Autofictions: a conversation with photographer Violeta Bubelyte and writer Virginija Kulvinskaite" will take place. The act has interested V. Bubelytė since her youth in the Soviet era, when any discourse of nudity or eroticism was considered taboo even in art. The author boldly crossed the boundaries of the traditional approach to the female body. Today, her works are stored in the Lithuanian Art Museum, the National Library in Paris, private collections in Lithuania and abroad. V. Kulvinskaitė (Cibarauskė), who is interviewing a photographer, was better known as a literary critic and poet for a long time, but after the publication of her first novel "When I Was a Malalietka" (Kitos knogi, 2019), she became famous as a prose author.
French writer Mathias Énard will take part in the festival "Vilnius lapai" on Saturday evening, November 14. He will not be able to come to the event in Vilnius, but Dalius Jonkus will interview the author remotely. M. Énard is one of the most famous contemporary French writers, familiar to Lithuanian readers from the book "Kompasas" (Baltos lankos, 2019). The novel was awarded the Goncourt Prize (2015) and nominated for the Man Booker International Prize (2017). M. Énard studied Persian and Arabic languages and lived in the Middle East for a long time. Refreshing, imbued with bittersweet humor and longing for love, accompanied by breathtaking erudition, "Kompasas" is a journey through past eras, an invitation to understand yourself through another: to constantly search for the relationship between East and West, yesterday and tomorrow, to dissolve the boundaries between countries, languages, cultures. and eras.
Late on Saturday night, Tomas Ramanauskas, who crosses the boundaries of literature and popular modern club culture, will invite you to a literary disco in "Menų spaustuvėje". A Lithuanian advertising creator, entrepreneur, creativity teacher, publisher, event organizer, DJ, writer and director who calls himself DJ Miss America, organizes the evening "Literature for the body, or Non-literary disco".
Lately, DJ Miss America appears very rarely: one has not played yet this year. T. Ramanauskas himself says that he agreed to participate in "Vilniaus lapaose" due to the desire to make sure that book lovers can not only nod, but also move to the music.
On Sunday, November 15, the festival will be crowned with an evening with Alvydas Šlepik. In addition to the writer, the literary meeting will be attended by trumpeter Linas Rupšlaukis, the event will be hosted by actor Andrius Bialobžeskis. A. Šlepikas - writer, poet, screenwriter and director. His novel "My name is Marytė" was included in The Times' list of the best novels of 2019. book list, it was also named the best historical novel of the month in the UK.
The latest collection of A. Šlepik's poetry "My father is dying" (2019) publishes both new and selected texts of the author from previous collections and collections. The author has just been awarded the Jotvingiai Prize for this book. His poems and short prose have been published in foreign anthologies, almanacs and periodicals.
"Leaves of Vilnius" festival events literary readers will be waiting both live in the "Art Printing House" and virtually. Those who do not have the opportunity to come to the events will be able to watch them online - the festival organizers will organize live broadcasts of literary meetings.
