Nida Community Centre (Taikos St. 17)
Wednesday, Sept. 13, 8.30 P.M.
Antanas Sutkus. Scenes from the photographer’s life
Documentary, dir. Vytautas V. Landsbergis, 63 min., Lith. lang., Eng. sub., 2021. N-7
A cinematic portrait of one of Lithuania’s most famous photographers, revealing the dashing, creative (and disability-ridden) ways of the photographer even in his old age. The handling of lost and unexpectedly discovered archives from the Soviet era, international exhibitions, lessons in humanistic photography in Nida for beginners, perhaps future photographers, schoolchildren. At the same time, it is a message to those who did not live in the Soviet era. A message that even under totalitarian regimes, freedom is possible, a game that destroys the foundations of the system.
Thursday, Sept. 14, 8.30 P.M.
Gustoniai in Gustoniai
Documentary, dir. Darius Žiūra, 76 min., Lith. lang., Eng. sub., 2020
Gustoniai is a village in Northern Lithuania. This is also the name of the contemporary art project, which has been ongoing since 2001. Every three years, the artist Darius Žiūra takes a one-minute portrait of every villager, who agreed to participate in the project and creates a film from these portraits. The period of the project is getting longer, it reflects the changes in the age of the participating people, the change of the village itself as a social structure, affected by the development of the socio-political state, becomes evident. Also, this project captures how filming and video playback formats change, and what features of video are characteristic of a specific era.
In 2018, in the summer, D. Žiūra organized a culture and art festival in the village of Gustoniai, during which the project "Gustoniai" was first presented to the project participants themselves. The images filmed during the festival are complemented by footage from the films of the "Gustoniai" project and material from D. Žiūra's personal archive, depicting the artist's "kitchen" - relationships with people participating in the project, failures, emotional conflicts. All these layers intertwine into a narrative that cannot be assigned to any specific documentary genre. It tells a true story about a true story. From different perspectives illuminates the microcosm in which something immeasurably large and unknown is hidden.
Friday, Sept. 15, 9.00 P.M.
Memories of China
Documentary, dir. Emiland Guillerme, 52 min., Eng. l., Fr. l, Chin. l., Eng. sub., 2022
In Beijing, French artist and collector Thomas Sauvin saved from destruction nearly a million anonymous negatives dating from the early 1980s - when film photography became accessible to a large part of the population - to the advent of digital in the 2000s.
This exceptional archive offers us an unexpected glimpse of the daily lives of hundreds of families from the urban middle classes during China's thirty-year post-Mao economic boom. A time that was rich in social, economic and cultural upheavals, seen from the point of view of ordinary people.
Some of these photographs have gained historical value over time ; others offer the poetry of fleeting moments. Their overall power, though, resides in their mundane quality, drawing us closer to these strangers who seem to look right back at us. A unique opportunity of showing China like it hasn't been shown before, of telling the history of a rather secretive country by looking through the keyhole, especially during the period of opening up to the country.
