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Baltic Film Directors

3K views 22 replies 4 participants last post by  estfan 
#1 ·
I was doing a search of movies from countries that, as far as I was aware, I'm yet to explore any of their movie output. One of those countries I sought happened to be Lithuania, and while perusing wikipedia, I chanced upon a name which stood out because a few of his works had been screened at successive Cannes shows. His name is Šarūnas Bartas and I'm wondering if anyone [Andy?] knows anything of his work? He seems to specialize in art house stuff, I noticed a few of his movies are totally free of dialogue, one of these is set in Siberia to give on example, another is set in a dilapidated apartment complex in Vilnius and utilizes a series of shots/stills which interlink various people and throughout you discover how they relate to each other.
 
#7 ·
yes, also watched it and liked it a lot. very honest sports documentary and i can see why it was not allowed to be shown by his club during his active career. not because there was anything very shocking but simply because it showed him as a human being and not the demigod the try to present the rikishi in Japan.
 
#12 ·
Not a film but I was reading about this interesting book "Vilnius Poker" by Lithuanian writer Ricardas Gavelis, has anyone [Andy?] heard about this one?

Vytautas Vargalys is stuck in an absurd job, helping to create a digital catalog for a library in Soviet-ruled Vilnius that no one is allowed to access. A survivor of the labor camps, an experience which has left him both physically and mentally damaged, Vargalys is obsessed with finding out "what’s really going on" in Vilnius. As his tenuous grip on reality begins to slip, he discovers that They have taken over. They are dead-eyed demons who have assumed human form; They are determined to steal everyone's soul and turn the world to shit. Vargalys begins to find evidence of Their presence wherever he looks: in books, in the death of his best friend, and in the beautiful women who are sent to work at the library.

One of these beautiful women is Lolita, an aptly named seductress with a mysterious past and a growing love for Vargalys. Vilnius Poker chronicles the tragic relationship between Vargalys and Lolita—and between Vilnius and everyone who lives in the city—from four different perspectives, and it captures the surreal horror of life under the Soviet yoke.

By turns lyrical, philosophical, and deeply shockingly, Vilnius Poker is often referred to as "the turning point in Lithuanian literature" and it earned Gavelis his reputation as Lithuania's greatest novelist.
 
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