𝘝𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘴 is the title of this year’s International Kaunas Film Festival, a curated programme of films, contemporary video art and artists’ films that explore the impact of images and media as active makers of history. The title was inspired by Harun Farocki’s (1944-2014) 𝘝𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 (1992), a documentary film on the role of media in the unfolding Romanian Revolution, during which the execution of the leader of the country was broadcasted live. One of the themes of the festival is how contemporary video cultures become an extension of our visual thinking and what place this reciprocal process takes in our imagination. How the so-called videoimagination, created through moving image and technology, thrives in the world? Can our dreams be called videos too? The programme aims to present specifically artistic videos, artists’ productions, often made outside the film production market and the politics of affiliation behind it.

The programme also pays attention to the various forms of moving image production as collective undertaking, as activism and as research. This year’s curated selection of feature fiction and documentary films profoundly engage with understandings of health and wellbeing and the complex relation between individual and societal ‘health’ whether embodied, economic or environmental and across the political spectrum. Who defines the boundary and the liminal state of health and sickness? In the selection of artists’ films, we see how individual health and illness are affected by social structures. The films show how we might deconstruct these structures and also how we can revisit and question the histories and futures of what it means to be healthy or unwell. The curated selection asks –– what and who holds us together and keeps us apart? What makes societies fragile and resilient?