10 Years of Vertical Cinema: Screenings in Vilnius

Marking a decade of pioneering cinematic experiences, Vertical Cinema travels to Lithuania’s renowned Scanorama film festival. The special two-day showcase highlights the innovative approach of the curatorial and commissioning project that reimagines the dimensions of the screen.

Initiated by Sonic Acts, Vertical Cinema debuted at the 2013 edition of the Kontraste Festival in Krems, Austria. The project grew over the years, encompassing esteemed filmmakers and visual artists such as Joost Rekveld, Susan Schuppli, Rosa Menkman, Makino Takashi, Lukas Marxt, and Hans Christian Gilje, who were invited to create unique audiovisual works for a specially constructed, 90-degree rotated 35mm projector. The result is an impressive array of abstract films, formal experiments, found footage, chemically processed tapes, and a live laser show – all flipped sideways, echoing the now-ubiquitous framing of portable smart devices. Notably, Vertical Cinema was initiated before the advent of Instagram ‘Stories,’ which popularised verticality as a standard format. Although Instagram launched in 2010, the Stories feature didn’t appear until 2016, positioning Sonic Acts’ early investigations as an anticipatory gesture.

Since its world premiere, the project has been featured at numerous prestigious festivals and museums worldwide, becoming a celebrated, globally recognised achievement.

Scanorama, one of Lithuania’s largest and most prominent international cultural events, brings together over 40,000 film enthusiasts each year. In 2024, the festival presents titles from Vertical Cinema, alongside highly regarded European films and top global picks.

On 6 and 7 November, 18:30–19:30 EET (17:30 CEST), Vilnius’ industrial culture and art space, Kablys+Kultūra, will host a rotating collection of these experimental films, showcased on a 10-metre-high monolithic screen. Amongst many others, catch Joost Rekveld’s #43 (20213), which explores the intersection of art, biology, and mathematics, drawing inspiration from concepts that gained prominence during the development of cybernetics in the 1950s and 1960s. There’s also Susan Schuppli’s Atmospheric Feedback Loops (2017), focusing on an open-air laboratory near Amsterdam that distinguishes climate change signals from meteorological noise, and HC Gilje’s rift (2017), consisting of more than 10,000 images of plastic packaging filmed under a microscope.

Find the full list of films and purchase tickets (if you are in Vilnius) via the Scanorama website.