Dr. Ilona Jurkonytė

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Ilona Jurkonytė (she/her) is a film and media researcher, Vilnius University Foundation Scholar. Previously, Ilona was a Vanier Scholar at Concordia University (2015-2019), where she defended her PhD in Film and Moving Image program.

Ilona is a scholar, curator, and educator with international and diverse institutional experience, a background that merges philosophy (BA), art history and criticism (MA), media and communication studies (MA) and film and moving image studies (PhD). Her research interests span transnational film studies, environmental media studies, artistic research and film curation.

Ilona’s work critically examines tensions between notions of the national and transnational in moving image production and circulation, as well as their geo- and hydro- political implications. Ilona engages with environmental media approach to rethink coloniality in Global Easts and beyond.

Ilona is currently preparing a manuscript, based on her doctoral research, entitled “From Temperature of the War to Descending Clouds: US Bomb Archive and the Marshall Islands.” The project reconceptualizes the relationship between nuclear media archives, militarization, and the environment.

Prior to her academic work Ilona held an active curatorial practice which continues to inform her research. She is particularly interested in the potentials of artists’ moving image and its participation in audiovisual cultures.

Ilona was a Co-founder (2007), Managing Director (2007-2012) and Artistic Director (2007-2020) of the Kaunas International Film Festival (Lithuania), which was instrumental in rescuing Romuva, the oldest cinema theatre in Lithuania. 2012-2014, she worked as Film Program Curator at the Contemporary Art Centre Cinema (Vilnius, Lithuania).

Conference papers

• 2023/10/20-21Co-Organizer and Participant – conference paper: “Intantible Cinema Heritage” in 8^th Baltic Sea Region Film Studies Conference: City, Cinema, and Media.
• 2023/08/30 Paper: Cold War Liquid Frontier: Environmental Media and Global Easts. Conference: “Decolonization of Memory in the Former Soviet Spaces,” organized by Yulia Yurchuk (Södertörn University) and Fabio Belafatti (University of Groningen/ Vilnius University).
• 2021/08 Paper: What Do Cinema Rescue Cases Expose. Conference: “(Post)Socialism as a Global Resource.” Presentation in program “Strategy, Organization, Action,” UC Berkeley.
• 2021/06 Paper: New Vocabularies: Scale and Beauty or Bomb as an Archiving Devise. Conference: “Atomic Heritage Conference,” organized by Anna Storm (Stockhom University), Florence Fröhlig (Södertörn University), Tatiana Kasperski (Pompeu Fabra University), Eglė Rindzevičiūtė (Kingston University), Andrei Stsiapanau (Vytautas Magnus University).
• 2019/09/19 Paper: Production of Cinematic Public Space and Its Potentials Today Participant – “V Baltic Sea Region Film History Conference” in Vilnius, Lithuania.
• 2019/09/01 Participant in a discussion “Progressive Festival Culture” at Artists’ Moving Image Symposium in at Nordland Art and Film School in Kabelvåg, Norway.
• 2019/03/14 Respondent in a seminar: “Postsocialist Politics and the Ends of Revolution” to presentations by Neda Atanasoski (UC Santa Cruz) and Kalindi Vora (UC Davis, organized by GEM Lab (Concordia University).

Research projects and grants

Vilnius University Foundation Scholar
Preparing for publishing a monograph “Temperature of War and Descending Clouds: US Bomb Archive and the Marshall Islands”

Membership of international organisations, editorial boards, international working groups, etc. 

Global Emergent Media Lab

Feminist Media Studio

Participation in public, educational activities

• 2023/11 Curator, Speaker – Entangled Archives of War: experiences, images, and politics of representation, as part of the ARchipelago – an augmented and collaborative archive project developed by Armina Pilav, Clarissa Thieme and the Goethe Institut Sarajevo.
• 2022/10 Presenter, Discussion Moderator – “What Would it Take to Make The Journey Today?” Public presentation for the occasion of screening The Journey by Peter Watkins (1987) in Sodas 2123, Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association, Vilnius, Lithuania. Curators: Rastko Novakovic and Egidijus Mardosas.
• 2021/01 Public Call – initiator and co-writer: Calling for Sexual Violence Preventive Policies in Film Industry Institutions.
• 2019/09/27 Initiator, Organizer, and Moderator – international symposium dedicated to artists’ moving images: On & For Production and Distribution in Kaunas, Lithuania. Film industry and art production event, funded by EU Creative Europe.
• 2019/09 Speaker ­– Progressive Festival Culture at Artist Moving Image Symposium in at Nordland Art and Film School in Kabelvåg, Norway.
• 2018/08 – 2021/05 Project Leader – Lithuania “On & For Production and Distribution” – an EU collaboration that is conceived to advance and strengthen the field of artists’ moving image. Film program, artists’ talks, symposium
• 2018/09 Symposium “Film Festival and Public Space” in collaboration with Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania and Concordia University, Canada
• 2017/05 – 09 Guest Film Curator – Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival in Berwick, UK. Curated a programme Ultramarine: Sea as The Political Space
• 2012/08 Keynote speaker – “Geopolitics of Film Distribution in the Baltic countries” Step-in Locarno, organized by Locarno International Film Festival. This was an important event that marked a beginning of crucial changes in art house film distribution in the Baltic countries.
• 2007-2012 together with Dainius Genys and team of Kaunas International Film Festival, Ilona initiated and organized Romuva Cinema rescue, in Kaunas.

Other information you would like to share

2023/10 Lecturer at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre – PhD in Art seminar Contemporary Cinema Cultures

2021/03/25 – 08/01 Exhibition Arabidopsis Thaliana, co-authored with Santiago Reyes Villaveces Museum of Modern Art Bogota. Exhibition cycle MAMBO 2021-1/Landscape, Nature and Territory. The resilient quality of life under extreme circumstances.

Selected Scholarships:

2023 Vilnius University Foundation Grant

2015 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship