On the European Day of Jewish Culture - the film "Goldblatt" about the world-famous Litvak photographer

On 3 September, the European Day of Jewish Culture, the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History (Naugarduko str. 10) invites visitors to remember two world-famous Litvaks from the Republic of South Africa (RSA): to see a film about photographer David Goldblatt, presented by his daughter, Brenda Goldblatt, and take part in educational activities interpreting motifs from the work of artist Rhona Gorvy.

 

In Goldblatt, a film by director Daniel Zimbler, D, Goldblat's compatriots - artist William Kentridge, one of the most famous guests of Kaunas - the European Capital of Culture, and Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize winner in Literature - are interviewed. Drawing on the photographer's extensive archive, the film is a meditation on identity, place and longing in the complex, ever-changing landscape of South Africa.

 

The main subjects of David Goldblatt's (1930-2018) photographs are inequality and social injustice in South Africa during apartheid and the country's landscapes. The racial discrimination and segregation perpetrated by the regime was seen by many around the world through the lens of this photographer.

 

However, Goldblatt distinguished himself from other photographers in South Africa by his creative strategy: he documented not the events of apartheid, but the circumstances that led up to it.

 

"I was very interested in the events that were taking place in the country as a citizen but, as a photographer, I’m not particularly interested, and I wasn’t then, in photographing the moment that something happens. I’m interested in the conditions that give rise to events," he said once.

 

 

He became interested in photography as a teenager and started working professionally in 1963. He was the first PAR representative invited to open a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He has exhibited at the Jewish Museum and the New Museum in New York, as well as in Paris, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Porto, Brussels, Munich, Barcelona, Melbourne and elsewhere.

 

Goldblatt was one of the few PAR artists to participate in the prestigious Documenta 11 and Documenta 12 exhibitions in Kassel (Germany). His work has been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Barbican Centre in London.

In 2015 David Goldblatt, persuaded by his children, visited Lithuania. When he arrived, he took a single photograph of the site of the massacre at Papilė, where his grandparents came from.

 

Daniel Zimbler's film "Goldblatt" was scheduled to be shown at the museum`s cinema hall several years ago, but the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the plans. The film will be screened in English.