CoMo No. 18: Lithuania (October, 2023)

[sally]

[sally]

sooooooo......there's mekas, there's bartas, there's poetic documentary....

there's.........no silent movies???? nooooooooo

Cinema, it is generally agreed, arrived in Lithuania in 1909, the year the American Lithuanian Antanas Raciunas, filmed the sights of his native village for fellow Lithuanian immigrants and Vladislavas Starevicius (Wladyslaw Starewicz) made the film Prie Nemuno (By the Nieman River). National cinema was slow to develop, the first native newsreel was screened in 1921 and the first feature, Onyte ir Jonelis (Annie and Johnn), directed by Jurgis Linartas and Vladas Stipaitis was completed ten years later, in 1931.

anyway, things/directors i have liked (pretty much everything):
vytautas žalakevičius
arūnas žebriūnas
jausmai
the old man and the land - robertas verba
time walks through the city - almantas grikevičius
audrius stonys
arūnas matelis (particularly from unfinished tales of jerusalem)
autumn snow - valdas navasaitis
man-horse - audrius mickevičius
vortex - gytis lukšas
nova lituania - karolis kaupinis



things i need to check out (where are the women?):
the ones i haven't seen from this (but no subs??): https://www.verzio.org/en/2019/program/ ... and-shadow
viktoras starošas
edmundas zubavičius
henrikas šablevičius
ave, vita & sadūto tūto by almantas grikevičius
small confession - algirdas araminas
northern crusades - marijonas giedrys (are there subs for this????)
the devil's bride
algimantas puipa
deimantas narkevičius
illusions - diana matuzevičienė, kornelijus matuzevičius
raimondas vabalas (especially marš, marš! tra-ta-ta! - are there subs for this?)
klostės
emilija škarnulytė
children of hotel america
loznitsa's mr. landsbergis



seem to be a bit low on the comedies tbh

[niminy-piminy]

The aphotic zone is the portion of a lake or ocean where there is little or no sunlight.
It is formally defined as the depths beyond which less than 1 percent of sunlight penetrates.

considering that the main purpose of these CoMo threads is unveiling personal blind spots or discovering hidden gems,
there can be hardly a better starter film (of another CoMo installment) than the one called "aphotic zone"

APHOTIC ZONE (Emilija Škarnulytė, 2022) #CoMoLietuva

In the dark depths of the Gulf of Mexico, alien technologies reach toward strange creatures of the ocean. Coruscating images of silver scales and bioluminescent bodies fill the midnight blue screen to hypnotic effect in this sixteen-minute short from Lithuanian “artist-mermaid” Emilija Škarnulytė.

makes an excellent double bill with the following year poll short...

waves - patrick carey (25 mins)

suitable for the horrorphile poll, this is nature documentary via h p lovecraft (positively eldritch) no idea why all the reviews are like 'blah blah beautiful irish coast', this wet stuff is malevolent and possessed and gave me the heebie-jeebies

i think one reason standing on a beach and looking out to sea is so relaxing is because you're thinking 'thank fuck i'm not out there'

streaming: https://ifiarchiveplayer.ie/waves/

btw., recently, i experienced ocean depth (with my very eyes) on a local shopping mall's rooftop...

The World of Jellyfish
On the rooftop of Arkády Pankrác shopping centre you will find the European’s largest spherical aquarium. It includes 38 smaller spherical aquariums in which visitors will see more than 10,000 jellyfish of all sizes. The interiors are supposed to evoke feeling like being under the sea, which is strengthened by 3D screenings and audio-visual effects.

surrounded by the world of commerce, i witnessed a lot of natural beauty ↓↓↓↓

[sally]

and we go deeper into the dark......into the mind itself!.....


reflections - henrikas šablevičius (1968) #CoMoLietuva

In 1968, he made Reflections for Lithuanian television – a philosophically and metaphorically nuanced short, regarded as his greatest work in the poetic cinema mould. In its symbolic and oblique visual language, the film invites viewers to mediate upon the subtle meaning behind the montage. Originally titled Poetic Fantasy, Reflections did not escape the scrutiny of Soviet censorship and was “shelved” for nearly twenty years: a neat encapsulation of the often-antagonistic relationship between the authorities and a filmmaking school that was at least in part a reaction against their edicts. Šablevičius himself stated that: “Poetic documentary cinema was partly an expression of the spirit of the Lithuanian nation, its character, and at the same time it was a certain armour against lies, pseudo-socialism and other untruths…”

meaning = just be sad and depressed about whatever: the passing of time, the holocaust, life in lithuania, whatever....











and seemingly all lithuanian films lead to bartas......

[greennui]

Bartas is a director that very much feels like he should be up my street but I've just never been able to warm to for some reason, despite Yekaterina Golubeva.

[sally]

ah, your problem is the idea of 'warming'

nothing warm around here

(will attempt to disprove that over coming month, maybe)

[sally]

in memory of the day passed by - šarūnas bartas (1990) #CoMoLietuva


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAHltnc8JZ0

[niminy-piminy]

RAGANA – A WITCH'S MAGIC (Antanas Skučas, 2008) #CoMoLietuva

https://youtu.be/Ht0OGbYzh3g?si=9u7vG-tsrnJ9fJvW

MR NIGHT HAS A DAY OFF (Ignas Meilūnas, 2018) #CoMoLietuva
https://vimeo.com/168067174

[greennui]

ah, your problem is the idea of 'warming'

nothing warm around here

(will attempt to disprove that over coming month, maybe)

Misery in itself isn't enough, think that's been my gripe with him, or the fact that I didn't like Pola X? Can't remember.

[sally]

well i guess amongst all the deliriums of northern scandi-baltic misery, a lithuanian inflected one is not nuance enough to be interesting for you but for me the different ways of defining that misery are art enough.....

(although may be fully suicidal by november)

anyway something slightly more cheerful, in that it is an elegy as reproach to enforced soviet life, but equally as pretty as all the snow-gripped doom fests:

a trip across misty meadows - henrikas šablevičius #1973poll #CoMoLietuva

streaming with subs here: http://www.sinemateka.lt/en/documentary ... ty-meadows

This film details the dismantling of the old railway Siaurukas in Lithuania and the construction of its new modern replacement. The old railway and the new railway become the symbol of the clash between the archaic rural Lithuania and Soviet industrialization.

we were at our own field - henrikas šablevičius (1988) #CoMoLietuva

streaming with subs: http://www.sinemateka.lt/en/documentary ... -own-field

"We Were at Our Own Field" (Lith. Pabuvam savam lauki) is a symbolic memory of the Lithuanian identity uprooted from the spaces of the old villages. Once a year, the inhabitants of the village destroyed during the Soviet times gather in the field where their homes once stood. They meet, visit the graves of their relatives, have a festive lunch and, while walking over the bare ground, see their past: the images of every well and blooming cherry are still vividly imprinted in their memories.

[sally]

the ancient woods - mindaugas survila (2017) #CoMoLietuva

slow nature doc

[sally]

the magic of travel - janina lapinskaitė (1999) #CoMoLietuva

charming short film about a travelling puppet show in the lithuanian countryside

streaming with subs: https://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/irasas/860 ... -magija-en

[niminy-piminy]

THE DEVIL'S BRIDE (Arūnas Žebriūnas, 1974) #CoMoLietuva

Difficult to watch with no clear objective.
The pacing was very unstable.
There was no proper flow of storytelling.

Unfortunately, the songs weren't great either.
Ironic considering this is a musical.

The songs would cut from one to another which seemed abrupt and usually out of place.

There were very few shots that left an impact, most were plain.
The camera told no story at all.

There was a devil and a love story but the absence of proper direction, camera shots, and music left it confusing.

trying to cope with the confusion experienced while watching this pastoral "rocky horror picture show" (knowing it's by the same filmmaker who made The Girl and the Echo) i was permanently reminded about the film called "Flying Saucers Over Our Village" (by Jaromil Jireš)
about "a model Communist village visited by a flying saucer"...

This bizarre 1976 sci-fi comedy represents something of an oddity within director Jaromil Jireš’s filmography. Vlastimil Brodský plays road repairer Huba, who is distracted from his work by an interest in the cosmos. Though at odds with his job, the hobby proves useful when an alien spaceship crash lands at the city dump. The aliens quickly assimilate into human society. The humanoid alien BA-HU falls in love with the beautiful Maryna; his colleague, professor LU-PU, helps Huba repair the roads in exchange for his helping to repair the ship’s chronometer.

Jaromil Jiřeš committed that atrocity (of offering himself to the devil) in false hopes that if (after getting banned) he made something incredibly foolish (pleasing to dumb neo-Stalinist censors), he might regain the liberties of making the proper (auteur) cinema. thus i started to cling to the hypothesis that Arūnas Žebriūnas was dealing with something similar?!?!?


but i didn't trace any claims supporting the idea the Devil's Bride would be a mischievous response to imposed censorship.
censorship seems not involved whatsoever!
moreover, the film seems not to be considered a stain on Arūnas Žebriūnas's filmography (like in Jaromil Jireš's case).
it's highly popular (one of the most snatched Lithuanian movies on KG!! — only Sharunas Bartas keeps pace).

It's a miracle this vibrant, high-spirited fairy tale, psychedelic at its core, hadn't been butchered or even banned by the strict censors behind the iron curtain, considering that it involves the shots of same-sex kissing and caressing in the very prologue.

During the 1960s and later in his career, Arūnas Žebriūnas created several films featuring children protagonists, including the adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella The Little Prince and a delightful B&W drama The Girl and the Echo. Devil's Bride marked his as well as his country's first foray into musicals and is today considered one of the most successful offerings to Lithuanian cinema of the Soviet era.

hardly anything sums up the insanity of this movie better than the insane conversation this film triggered on KG...

- After watching this film, I've now come to the conclusion that a Russian woman is the most naturally abundant beauty on the planet.
- But there is no Russian actress in the film...
- I'm sorry, I was a little tight last night. What would be the right term though - Soviet or Eastern Europe?
- In general, major turnoff for any Eastern European to be called Russian unless you really are.
- I see. It's like referring to a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi or a Sri Lankan citizen as Indian.

[sally]

It's a miracle this vibrant, high-spirited fairy tale, psychedelic at its core,

my suitable AI response to this truly great, insane, one of a kind lithuanian film

[niminy-piminy]

autumn snow - valdas navasaitis (1992) #CoMoLietuva

rewatched this most perfect film poem again, streaming with subs here: http://www.sinemateka.lt/en/documentary#autumn-snow

[niminy-piminy]

THE SECRET OF A CACTUS (Valentas Aškinis, 1988) #CoMoLietuva

‘The Secret of a Cactus’ is based on a fairy tale by the Lithuanian writer Vytaute Zilinskaite.
Aškinis worked on the script with the Russian director Vladimir I. Parker, seeking a technique to preserve his hatched drawing style.

stream (no dialogues) → https://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/irasas/200 ... -paslaptis

[sally]

bridges of time - kristīne briede, audrius stonys (2018) #CoMoLietuva

doc about the luminaries of baltic documentary film, gently probing in appropriate fashion the relation between time, meaning and material reality (especially that of fish it seems)

(& robertas verba is ADORABLE)












and a sneaky appearance from mekas in a fake beard? (no, it's latvian director aivars freimanis)

[niminy-piminy]

OLD MAN AND THE LAND (Robertas Verba, 1965) #CoMoLietuva
THOUGHTS OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD (Robertas Verba, 1969) #CoMoLietuva

The Old Man and the Land is considered one of the iconic early features of Lithuanian poetic documentary cinema.
Documentaries and newsreels of the time were expected to show country folk rejoicing in their improving Soviet existence.
The hero of Verba’s film is different.

Ironically, The Dreams of the Centenarians was submitted as a feature for the centenary of Lenin’s birth. It was the simplest way to secure authorization to film old Lithuanian people (some of whom were actually a hundred years old). The filmmaker also satisfied the Soviet censors’ requirement to focus on working-class people rather than the intelligentsia — the centenarians of the film are indeed ordinary country people. Still, ideologically-minded critics of the time objected to the film’s choice of “unsightly” subjects (a transgression against the USSR’s cult of youth and fitness) and “lack of optimism.”

all the women glad their men are dead, compared to man in other film missing his wife.
says a lot really.
men are deluded parasites!

!!!

[sally]

j. mekas - robertas verba (1980) #CoMoLietuva

[niminy-piminy]

LOST, LOST, LOST (Jonas Mekas, 1976) #CoMoLietuva

No figure appears more firmly rooted in both the American avant-garde and downtown New York than Jonas Mekas.
Yet Lost Lost Lost tells a very different story, one of exile, displacement, and longing.

[niminy-piminy]

DIARY (Oksana Buraja, 2003) #CoMoLietuva

‘How is it possible that my grandmother saw me in her dreams even before my mother got married?’ asks the protagonist of this moving film which follows the everyday life of Larisa.

Archival footage and black-and-white photographs take us on a journey through the past, from the Stalinist era to the post-Soviet and transitional periods, arriving in the present tense of Larisa.

In the end, demolition hovers over the entire neighborhood around the building where Larisa lives with her alcoholic husband and their three loving cats.

[niminy-piminy]

CHEER UP, VIRGINIJUS! (Viktoras Starošas, 1962) #CoMoLietuva



yup! cheer up, Virginijus!
in your lifetime, the imperialist Soviet Union will fall to pieces!

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.

[niminy-piminy]

SUNDAY. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LIFT-MAN ALBERTAS watched in the past, so now proceeding with...

TEN MINUTES BEFORE THE FLIGHT OF ICARUS (Arūnas Matelis,1991) #CoMoLietuva
FROM UNFINISHED TALES OF JERUSALEM (Arūnas Matelis,1996) #CoMoLietuva
THE FIRST FAREWELL TO PARADISE (Arūnas Matelis,1998) #CoMoLietuva
FLIGHT OVER LITHUANIA OR 510 SECONDS OF SILENCE (Audrius Stonys, Arūnas Matelis, 2000) #CoMoLietuva

the first farewell to paradise - arūnas matelis

i hadn't watched a lithuanian poetic doc in ages...*stares hard at como votes*

[niminy-piminy]

ABSURD PEOPLE (Jurgis Matulevičius, 2011) #CoMoLietuva

Film is about man‘s „dick-based“ thinking which leads to a primitive and desolate existence. But sooner or later even in the most impassible creature a feeling awakes.

Film won Porto Student film festival 2011. Best foreign film, director.

moreover, film just won The Most Stupid CoMoNo18 Contribution, and Worst Wannabe Bela Tarr Director Award.

[niminy-piminy]

utterly wrong film choice ↑ is being followed by an excellent one ↓
(even though only vaguely related to Lithuania — via one of the authoresses)

Giedrė Žickytė (*1980) is a Lithuanian film director, producer, documentary film maker.
In 2022 she was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts "for a vigorous and impressive creative leap".

this time, i don't object to the Prize given.
highly recommended!!




I AM NOT FROM HERE (Maite Alberdi, Giedrė Žickytė, 2016) #CoMoLietuva

Josebe (88) lives in a retirement home in Chile.
She thinks she has only just arrived from the Basque Country.
And every day must learn, again and again, that she’s been in that home for nearly a year.
And in Chile for 70 years.

stream with English subs! ↓↓
https://youtu.be/iXBOuMty6SA?si=PKqJhjJQiudEV_a9

[sally]

open the door to him who comes - audrius stonys (1989) #CoMoLietuva

i don't know if it's stonys (it IS stonys) or if my eyes have been bewitched by all the AI, but this is ridiculously poetic on the details

[sally]

earth of the blind - audrius stonys (1992) #CoMoLietuva

rewatch. masterpiece. lithuanians wait.
















love how the lock of hair echoes the lines under his eyes

[sally]

PS this is surely from a scene in german's hard to be a god?

[niminy-piminy]

ANTIGRAVITATION (Audrius Stonys, 1995) #CoMoLietuva

Two years after the completion of Earth of the Blind, I still felt the impression that a man climbing a big chimney had made on me.
I had a desire to share this feeling of losing breath at a high altitude.

[sally]

harbour - audrius stonys (1998) #CoMoLietuva

While shooting “Flying over blue field” we lived in Birtonas sanatorium hotel. I was watching treatment procedures. People were plunging into bubble, mud and mineral water baths. They were going circles singing, were standing under cold water spouts. All this seemed like a sacred ritual, that frees from scurf of life. They were naked, like just born, without any signs of standing in society. Movie – silent impression about tired people “harbour”.

there's no way this wasn't made with ai, i can't stop seeing it everywhere. anyway regardless, i love stonys. why did he stop making these precious little things?