The Role of a Lifetime
by Deimantas Narkevičius, LTU 2003, 16'
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED: Deimantas Narkevičius   EDITING: Jonas Juozapaitis, Deimantas Narkevičius
SCRIPT: Peter Watkins   VOICE OVER: Peter Watkins
SHOOTING: Audrius Kemežys   ORIGINAL SIZE: super8 film transferred on DVD
PHOTOGRAPHY: Geoffrey Cook    LANGUAGE: English; subtitles: Italian

Schermo dell'Arte - Archivio Film Presented at Lo schermo dell'arte FIlm Festival 2013
Focus On: Deimantas Narkevičius


The film reveals the author’s poetics, based on the counterpoint between the content of an interview with Peter Watkins, recorded in Lithuania, and the images that accompany it: drawings of the Lithuanian landscape by the artist Mindaugas Lukošaitis (including Gruto Park, populated by sculptures from the Soviet period), and old amateur films shot in Brighton, UK, the city that commissioned the film. The piece is a portrait of the English director and a reflection on the relationship between cinema language and historical representation.

Deimantas Narkevičius
Deimantas Narkevičius was born in Utena, Lithuania, in 1964. Trained as a sculptor, he began making films, videos and installations in the 90s. Among the most famous Lithuanian artists on the international scene, he represented his country at the Biennale di Venezia in 2001. In 2008, he won the Vincent van Gogh Biennial Award for Contemporary Art. Between 2007 and 2010, his work was exhibited in many important one-man shows: Among the things we touched, at the Vienna Secession, Deimantas Narkevičius at the BFI Southbank Gallery in London, and La vida unanime/The Unanimous Life, produced for the Museo Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Kunsthalle in Bern, the Hessel Museum at Bard College, New York, and the Vilnius National Gallery of Art. He lives and works in Vilnius.

Selected Fimography
2003: Scena; The Role of a Lifetime; 2004: Once in the XX Century; 2005: Disappearance of a Tribe; Matrioškos; 2007: Revisiting Solaris; The Head; 2008: The Dud Effect; 2009: Into the Unknown; 2010: Ausgeträumt; 2011: Restricted Sensation.

Film Courtesy: gb agency, Parigi; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlino; l’artista
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