‘Cinematic Inclusions’ is a rare and exciting Lithuanian film programme co-curated by Lina Kaminskaitė - Jančorienė and Janina Sabaliauskaitė, shedding light on the highlights of 20th century Lithuanian poetic and experimental documentary filmmaking.

Films are digitised and restored by NGO Meno Avilys (Hive of Arts), the organisation based in Vilnius, Lithuania which specialises in the area of film education, digitisation, restoration and preservation of Lithuanian documentary films.

Cinematic Inclusions is part of “Lithuanian Days in Scotland 22-25 October 2019 in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

For more info visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/755699074886092/

About the programme:

Lithuanian documentary filmmaking holds a special place in Lithuanian cinema history; it reflects the continuous search for cinematic aesthetics and captures the changing identity of society through time. Due to political circumstances, Lithuanian documentary film developed and formed under the influence of the Soviet Union rather than the West. On one hand, the filmmakers were influenced by national and ethnographic tropes, Soviet avant-garde and the famous Viktor Shklovsky’s poeticism; on the another hand, they were constantly subjected to systematic control and censorship. That caused distinctive traits; importance was placed upon visual language and poetic filmmaking, instead of recording objective reality, criticising it and placing importance on marginalised characters or peripheral landscapes.

Despite the prevailing circumstances, many filmmakers used documentary filmmaking as their artistic refuge, due to documentary filmmaking being less controlled by censorship than was unconventional film. After the re-establishment of the State of Lithuania (1990) and the fall of the Iron Curtain, freedom of expression was finally allowed, and a new generation of filmmakers started developing their work under the influences of Jonas Mekas – a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has often been called ‘the godfather of American avant-garde cinema’.

The programme of ‘Cinematic Inclusions’ has been curated with two purposes in mind:

- To show Lithuanian documentary filmmaking traditions and its continuation;

- To present different examples of experimentation, such as various techniques of montage or genre deconstructions, showing the limits that filmmakers were facing;

Canonical 1970s films were made by V. Starošas and R. Verba, which formed and shaped traditional poetic documentary filmmaking and whose influences were later visible in H. Šablevičius and D. and K. Matuzevičiai’s work, but this time in Lithuania which had just regained its independence. The films will reveal the various cinematic experimentations used by H. Šablevičius, A. Grikevičius, A. Stonys and A. Maceina.

The programme consists of filmmakers who are from multiple generations and whose films were made under different circumstances and restrictions: Stalinist social realism, The Khrushchev Thaw, Collapse of the USSR and Post–Soviet Lithuania. Each film is like an inclusion of time, capturing a sense of creator and personal struggles faced as a filmmaker.

Screenings will be introduced individually by an artist Janina Sabaliauskaite and later followed by an online Q&A session between cinema & media historian and research project curator at Meno Avilys - Lina Kaminskaitė - Jančorienė and writer & curator Herb Shellenberger.

Part I / 18.00pm

Documentary Traditions in Lithuanian Cinema, 81 min

Cheer up, Virginijus!, Dir: Viktoras Starošas, 1962, 21 min, Soviet Lithuania

The Old Man and the Land, Dir: Robertas Verba, 1965, 20 min, Soviet Lithuania
We Were At Our Own Field, Dir: Henrikas Šablevičius, 1988, 20 min, Soviet Lithuania

Illusions, Dir: Kornelijus Matuzevičius, 1993, 20 min, Lithuania

Break

Part II / 20.00pm

Experiments in Lithuanian Documentary Cinema, 87 min

Reflections, dir: Henrikas Šablevičius, 1968, 15 min, Soviet Lithuania

Off Gauge Temperature, dir: Almantas Grikevičius, 1973, 10 min, Soviet Lithuania

Earth of the Blind, dir: Audrius Stonys, 1992, 24 min, Lithuania

The Black Box, dir: Algimantas Maceina, 1994, 38 min, Lithuania

You can also include info about each of the films if you think it’s necessary.

More about films:

Cheer up, Virginijus!, Dir: Viktoras Starošas, 1962, 21 min, USSR

The film about the city of Naujoji Akmenė is regarded as one of the first Lithuanian attempts to liberate itself from the stereotypes of the Soviet documentary. Even though the remnants of ’Socialist prosperity’ are clearly perceptible in the movie, the process of directing is obtaining more freedom: the voiceover is losing its canonisation, and the power of the narrator is given to the main character, a small child, Virginijus.

The Old Man and the Land, Dir: Robertas Verba, 1965, 20 min, USSR

This film is Robertas Verba’s directorial debut. According to film critic Laimonas Tapinas, “it rarely happens that the first film is successful [...] and it is even more unusual a phenomenon that the first film changes trends in cinematography. Verba’s first film 'The Old Man and the Land’ had exactly that kind of influence”. As film critic Živilė Pipinytė puts it, “this film was the ‘ice-breaker’ which broke through the ice of Soviet ideology to form the peculiar stylistics of Lithuanian documentary film”. The hero of the film is the bright Lithuanian villager Anupras whose archaic worldview becomes a symbol of the ethno-cultural Lithuanian identity that was often opposed to the identity constructed by Soviet propaganda.

We Were At Our Own Field, Dir: Henrikas Šablevičius, 1988, 20 min, USSR

Henrikas Šablevičius’ films of the 1980s and 1990s differ significantly from his early oeuvre – they contain less clear-cut poetics and fewer visual metaphors, and they are longer, capturing the filmmaker’s journey and his silent observations of things before his eyes and camera. Šablevičius, however, continued his interest in family stories, people, and in their inner lives and experiences. Glasnost then Lithuania’s eventual independence from the USSR opened up the possibility of examining previously banned subjects: death, post-war resistance, and – as in We Were at Our Own Field – the damage done by the Soviet occupation and the simple longing for home.

Illusions, Dir: Kornelijus Matuzevičius, 1993, 20 min, Lithuania

This film by Kornelijus and Diana Matuzevičius is a portrait of Lithuanian Jewish writer and literary critic Jokūbas Josadė (Yankev Yosade). The film subtly transcends this individual story and is able to unlock the broader context of Lithuania, which had just regained its independence. The thoughts of a generation that was fading into oblivion, which are portrayed with abstract images, are akin to the way of life of the contemporary person.

Reflections, dir: Henrikas Šablevičius, 1968, 15 min, USSR

‘Reflections’ is a film by Henrikas Šablevičius that was made for Lithuanian Television. It is a surrealist étude that doesn't have a clear narrative and is courageous in the context of Lithuanian cinema at the time. The film was banned and put on the shelf for almost twenty years. Henrikas Šablevičius used the work of forgotten graphic artist Stasys Krasauskas. In the conditional spaces of the film, he creates a story about the dual character of a man, the search for himself, his liberation and his life with the past.

Off Gauge Temperature, dir: Almantas Grikevičius, 1973, 10 min, USSR

The focus of Grikevičius’s film is Tomas Petreikis, a senior machine constructor of Dzeržinkis’s factory in Kaunas. Instead of creating a conjunctural narrative about a hero of Socialist work ethic who exceeds the norms of production, the director depicts another part of his personality. During his leisure time, Tomas is a ballroom dancer, teacher and a judge in competitions. “Construction and dance? No, they have nothing in common”, Petreikis replies to a journalist’s question. However, the movie is rich in parallels which reveal the precision of both the constructor and dancer; his pursuit not only to control the machines perfectly but also to be a master in teaching ballroom dance, proposes quite a different view than is claimed by himself.

Earth of the Blind, dir: Audrius Stonys, 1992, 24 min, Lithuania

As film director Audrius Stonys puts it himself, “the film came into reality while trying to answer a question: how can one film the invisible?”. The film subtly weaves together moments of interaction between people, animals and their surroundings. Long shots, absence of words, and meditative images interplay with music, opening up to the viewer a haptic and philosophical realm which is beyond the visible. In 1992 the film received the FELIX Award for the Best European Documentary Film.

The Black Box, dir: Algimantas Maceina, 1994, 38 min, Lithuania

In this experimental documentary, film director Algimantas Maceina reveals the theme of the exile of Lithuanian society from a very personal perspective. He films the repatriation of the remains of his grandfather from Siberia to Lithuania. This personal approach to societal tragedy – the genocide caused by the Soviet regime – links personal to collective memory and erases the boundaries between personal film archives and publicly acknowledged films.

Special thanks to Lithuanian Cultural Attache Juste Kostikovaite and Lithuanian Embassy in London.

Partner: Lithuanian Culture Institute https://lithuanianculture.lt/

Film Still: Cheer up, Virginijus!, dir: Viktoras Starošas, 1962