The
Lithuanians did not take to Soviet domination, culturally or politically. In
strange ways, they cultivated their rugged, taciturn image to help sustain
their distinctive national identity. One can see this strategy at work in a
series of short documentaries restored to commemorate Lithuania’s EU
presidency. Collected under the title Cinematic
Inclusions, these often abstract films screen together for adventurous
viewers during Panorama Europe.
In
observance of strict chronology, the most accessible (and longest) Inclusion is the final film of the
program. Not so surprisingly given their non-conformist nature, hundreds of
thousands of Lithuanians were deported to Siberia during the Communist era. The
exile experience was especially painful when family members passed away,
because Lithuanian customs highly value burial in one’s homeland. As the rotten
Communist system started to crumble, many repatriated Lithuanians returned to
Siberia in hopes of smuggling loved ones’ remains back home. Algimantas Maceina
followed his father on one such mission in The
Black Box.
In
part, Box is like a time capsule of
the early days of newly independent Lithuania, but it is also an ethnographic
record of Lithuanian funerary customs. However, it is not included in Inclusions merely to represent the mid
1990s. While Maceina faithful records the trip, as well as the subsequent wake
and funeral for his grandfather’s recovered remains, he plays the footage as if
on an accelerated fast-forward. At least, you cannot say he does not respect
the audience’s time, as he documents a significant phenomenon largely
particular to Lithuania.
Before
going further, it is worth remembering American experimental film icon Jonas
Mekas is Lithuanian. Indeed, he would most likely appreciate the avant-garde aesthetic
of the rest of the Inclusions. As
much cinematic essays or visual tone poems as they are documentaries, they are
remarkably consistent in tone and subject matter, despite spanning twenty-seven
years of frustrating national history.
In
the 1960s, Robertas Verba established a template with The Old Man and the Earth and The
Dreams of Centenarians, celebrating the salt-of-the-earth while explicitly
rejecting Socialist Realism. Poring over every wrinkle and imperfection, Verba’s
films have a clear inclination towards grotesque fetishism. Not very doc-ish, they
present a rather surreal perspective that becomes even more pronounced in films
like Almantas Grikevičius’s Time Passes
Through the City. The ambivalent attitude towards industrial “progress”
reflected in Henrikas Šablevičius’s A
Trip Across the Misty Meadow is also clearly out of step with Socialist
propaganda. Yet, it is hard to get any less Soviet than the jazzy interludes that
make their way into several of the films’ soundtracks.
