Dr. Mantė Valiūnaitė

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Mantė Valiūnaitė is a film curator, researcher, and critic. In 2024, she defended her PhD dissertation in art studies, titled “Hybridity in Cinema: Theoretical Concepts, Film Festivals, and Cases of Lithuanian Documentary Films,” at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. She subsequently participated in a project funded by the LMTA Center of Excellence, dedicated to the preparation of a collective monograph on non-canonical Lithuanian documentary cinema. She has published several articles in academic journals and presented her work at conferences. She is currently conducting research titled “Postcolonial Encounters: Lithuanian Documentary Films in Africa, Asia, and South America During the Soviet Era,” which aims to explore cultural imaginaries of multiple colonizations by analyzing documentary films made by Lithuanian filmmakers in various countries across Africa, Asia, and South America. In many cases, these films can be categorized as travelogues.

In addition to her academic work, Mantė co-founded the film distribution company “Taip toliau” with colleagues, which distributes films from Africa, Asia, and South America in Lithuania. She currently works as a programmer for the Vilnius Short Film Festival. Previously, she served as Artistic Director of the Vilnius International Film Festival “Kino pavasaris” and worked as a programmer for the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival “Inconvenient Films.” She has also curated various projects for the NGO “Meno avilys.” In addition, she writes film reviews for the Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT) and the cultural weekly 7 Days of Art (7 meno dienos).

Selected conference presentations

• “Changing documentary cinema practices in Lithuanian cinema: “Acid Forest” and “Animus Animalis (A Story about People, Animals and Things)”, VI Baltic Sea Region Film History Conference, Riga, Latvia, held online during on 10-15 October, 2020.
• “Regained screens: Contemporary documentary cinema culture in Lithuania”. International conference „Studies in Eastern European Cinema“, held online on 7 June 2022.
• “Was it possible to delink? Travelogues from Africa by Mykolas Liubeckis and Viktoras Starošas”. Together with Dr. Narius Kairys. International conference „Studies in Eastern European Cinema“, Global Screen Media in Eastern Europe, Eastern European Screen Media Abroad, held on 3-4 July 2026 in University of Debrecen.

Research projects and grants

• “Postcolonial encounters: Documentary films created by Lithuanian filmmakers in Africa, Asia and South America during the Soviet era” (1 October 2026 – 30 September 2028)