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Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle collaborates with NGO ‘Meno Avilys’ and presents a programme ‘Cinematic Inclusions: documentary traditions and experiments in Lithuanian cinema’.

‘Cinematic Inclusions’ is a rare and exciting 3 day Lithuanian film programme co-curated by Lina Kaminskaitė - Jančorienė and Janina Sabaliauskaitė, shedding light on Lithuanian poetic and experimental documentary filmmaking.

Lina Kaminskaitė – Jančorienė – a cinema historian, researcher, and a co-founder of Meno Avilys – Mediatheque, the first independent cinematheque in Lithuania.

Janina Sabaliauskaite is an artist and curator currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Programme aims to show Lithuanian documentary filmmaking traditions and experiments, various techniques of montage or genre deconstructions that expose the limits of filmmaking that filmmakers were facing.

Lithuanian documentary filmmaking holds a special place in Lithuanian cinema history; it reflects the continuous search for cinematic aesthetics and captures the changing identity of society through time. Due to political circumstances, Lithuanian documentary film developed under the influence of the Soviet Union rather than the West, which resulted in distinctive traits of the documentary filmmaking. Visual language and poetic language of film became more important than realism.

Despite the prevailing circumstances, many filmmakers used less censorship-controlled documentary filmmaking as their artistic refuge. After the re-establishment of the State of Lithuania (1990) and the fall of the Iron Curtain a new generation of filmmakers started developing their work under the influence of Jonas Mekas – a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has often been called ‘the godfather of American avant-garde cinema’.

The films presented in the programme “Cinematic Inclusions” were produced under different circumstances, such as Stalinist social realism, The Khrushchev Thaw, Collapse of the USSR and Post–Soviet Lithuania.

Part I / Friday 8th of March 2019, 6.30pm

Documentary Traditions in Lithuanian Cinema

Screenings:

Cheer up, Virginijus!, Dir: Viktoras Starošas, 1962, 21 min, USSR

The Old Man and the Land, Dir: Robertas Verba, 1965, 20 min, USSR

We Were At Our Own Field, Dir: Henrikas Šablevičius, 1988, 20 min, USSR

Illusions, Dir: Kornelijus Matuzevičius, 1993, 20 min, Lithuania

Friday 8th of March - Q&A with Lina Kaminskaitė Jančorienė will be facilitated by Adam Pugh -

Creative Director of Artists' Moving Image at Tyneside Cinema.

Part II / Saturday 9th of March 2019, 6.30pm

Experiments in Lithuanian Documentary Cinema

Screenings:

Reflections, dir: Henrikas Šablevičius, 1968, 15 min, USSR

Off Gauge Temperature, dir: Almantas Grikevičius, 1973, 10 min, USSR

Earth of the Blind, dir: Audrius Stonys, 1992, 24 min, Lithuania

The Black Box, dir: Algimantas Maceina, 1994, 38 min, Lithuania

Part III / Sunday 10th of March 2019, 2pm

Importance of Jonas Mekas (1922-2019)

Screening:

I Had Nowhere To Go, dir: Douglas Gordon, 2016, 97 min, Germany

All screenings will be introduced and later followed by Q&A sessions with Lina Kaminskaitė - Jančorienė.

8-10 March 2019 / Star & Shadow Cinema / NE2 1BB

Tickets: £7/£5

More information: https://www.starandshadow.org.uk