CoMo No. 18: Lithuania (October, 2023)
Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 12:45 pm
a place to talk about movies and whatnot
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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.
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.
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.
btw., recently, i experienced ocean depth (with my very eyes) on a local shopping mall's rooftop...sally wrote: ↑Sun Oct 01, 2023 9:12 pm 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/
surrounded by the world of commerce, i witnessed a lot of natural beauty ↓↓↓↓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.
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…”
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" (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.
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)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.
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?!?!?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.
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.
- 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.
métaphore, mon cul wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 1:33 pm It's a miracle this vibrant, high-spirited fairy tale, psychedelic at its core,
sally wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 2:37 pm 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
stream (no dialogues) → https://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/irasas/200 ... -paslaptis‘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.
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.”
!!!
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.
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.
moreover, film just won The Most Stupid CoMoNo18 Contribution, and Worst Wannabe Bela Tarr Director Award.Film won Porto Student film festival 2011. Best foreign film, director.
this time, i don't object to the Prize given.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".
stream with English subs! ↓↓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.
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”.