CASE STUDY - Emerging vitality of the heritage sector in Lithuania

As guest of honour at the 12th edition of the MIFC, Lithuania has a particularly vibrant heritage sector, embodied by numerous players and large-scale projects. Facing Ariel Schweitzer, film historian, critic, lecturer and moderator of this unprecedented round table, Aleksas Gilaitis, Dmitrij Gluščevskij, Lina Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė, Giedrė Simanauskaitė and Jonas Zagorskas described in detail the future of the Lithuanian classical industry.

A highly controversial filmography

The history of Lithuanian cinema began in 1909, with animated films by Ladislas Starewitch. His short films were the beginning of a tormented cinematography, marked by war and occupation, which led Lithuanian cinema to suffer from censorship for a long time. It was not until 1991 that Lithuania gained its independence. 

However, cinema did not come to a standstill, as artists found new ways to create. Dmitrij Gluščevskij, curator and film critic, Head of Acquisitions, Lithuanian National Radio and Television, LRT, explains that some films made during the Soviet occupation or the two world wars were subject to the constraints of censorship, while others circumvented them. Using childhood as a subject was one of the most frequently used strategies. 

But with all this filmography, the question of its identity arises: can it be identified as Lithuanian cinema? This issue is particularly raised at the time of distribution. Showing these films would be tantamount to decolonising them. 

A theme addressed by Lina Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė, doctor specialising in cinema, researcher and curator of heritage films at the Media Education and Research Center Meno Avilys. With the acquisitions of film collections, consolidating an archive with over 13,000 titles, the debate has opened up according to her on reconstruction after the Soviet occupation, questioning how to approach it and how to build community in the face of this controversial heritage. Dmitrij Gluščevskij then talks about distributors, who don't know how to show such creations. 

A colossal heritage that needs to be shown, but how?

These are being repatriated to Lithuania after negotiations with Russia, reports Lina Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė. In all, 11,000 films have been recovered and entrusted to what will soon become the Lithuanian Film Centre,’ explains Giedrė Simanauskaitė, who is in charge of the project at the Cinémathèque nationale, Lithuanian Film Centre. In addition to these archives, there are 2,500 films that are not Lithuanian, but rather international films that were not shown during the Soviet occupation.  

This raises the question of how to show these works, both national and international. Aleksas Gilaitis' festival, Pirmoji Banga (The First Wave), which was launched in 2016, offers an initial solution. Continuing the tradition of screening silent and talking films in 35mm, which is limited to Vilnius because that is where the last cinema with the technology to do so is located, films are shown to a national audience. The films shown are very international, as the festival does not promote national cinema but rather plays an educational role. It wants to show the era, with only one screening per film, to signify its importance.

For Lina Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė, the work of digitising films is another opportunity, making it possible to broadcast to new audiences to place Lithuanian cinematography back in the history of cinema and make it more accessible. But the industry remains limited in the face of such a competitive market, with distributors not knowing how to reach international audiences.

Dmitrij Gluščevskij points out that the tradition of going to the cinema has been lost in Lithuania, and that it is gradually developing again thanks to American blockbusters and heritage films. Archive films are particularly eagerly awaited by the public, so presentation work is necessary. What remains to be done is to teach the public to be curious about going to the cinema, particularly for titles that don't fit into the usual boxes of Lithuanian cinema. 

The future of the industry: the creation of a film library

One of the first constraints on the creation of the Lithuanian film library was to store the many items in the archives. Dmitrij Gluščevskij recounts that, as they did not own the rights to all the films, they wondered whether they should store them. In the end, preservation came first. So they don't own the rights to the films that make up their archive, but they all explain that this is a problem common to other film libraries, such as the one in Bologna.

It is worth noting that while the principle of a film library is self-evident in many European countries, such as France and Italy, Dmitrij Gluščevskij points out that in Lithuania the work of film libraries has already begun without them even existing. A network of organisations have set about storing and restoring Lithuania's heritage, which means that the cinémathèque will no longer play a central role. It will become part of an ecosystem that is already well established, offering a new operating model.

What can we learn from the restoration sector in Lithuania?

As a rapidly expanding sector, the catering industry in Lithuania is taking its first steps, but is not standing still when it comes to projects. As Jonas Zagorskas, film restorer at the Lithuanian National Cinematheque and colourist at the BBposthouse studio in Vilnius, explains as part of a very small and poorly trained team, the first obstacle to restoration in the Baltic region is their lack of qualifications, which they are remedying: they trained this summer in Bologna. Their second obstacle is their equipment, which is not adapted to their films, and their difficult access to negatives. In fact, he says that his team works with positives of poorer quality than the negatives, which are often stored in Russia, with a scan for negatives. However, they have just obtained a scan for positives and are preparing to rescan films on which they have already worked. In all, about one film is restored every 6 months, from 35 or 60 mm prints. The future looks bright all the same, with Jonas Zagorskas in talks to set up a joint laboratory with Latvia.