The Paradox of Lithuanian National Cinema
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Bjorn Ingvoldstad The Paradox of Lithuanian National Cinema This article is adapted from a chapter of my dissertation— my deep and sincere thanks go to Inta Gāle Carpenter, Michael Curtin, Joan Hawkins and Barb Klinger. When I first moved to Lithuania in 1997, it in their decades of exile. Another way might was striking how important locally produced be to look at groups who could be defined as a television and pop music was to my friends and nation or a people, but without a geographi- neighbours. Equally striking was the structuring cally defined nation-state. This might include, absence of any discussion of domestically pro- for instance, Yiddish1 or Romani2 cinema. We duced films made after 1991. People would talk might also speak of Basque, Kurdish or Pal- about, and even offer to show me, films from estinian cinema, in which bodies of work have the Soviet period they knew and loved—but no emerged from geographically contained sub- one had much to say about Lithuanian films of national regions or districts. During the Cold the 1990s. What had happened to Lithuanian War, Lithuanian cinema could be considered cinema? This article discusses motion pictures in this final category: a geographically defined, in Lithuania—in particular, the ways in which sub-national entity. After the Soviet collapse, films are being produced and consumed in the of course, Lithuania became an independent Lithuanian context. nation-state once again. But as we will see, A key term in my discussion will be ‘na- among the myriad changes that simultaneously tional cinema’. At first glance, this is an un- took place in the wake of this collapse, Lithua- problematic, even self-defining term. Show me nian national cinema’s relationship with its au- a nation, and I will show you a national cinema. dience profoundly shifted. Pioneering works of film criticism read national My main objective here is to investigate cinema like a symptomatic text from which we the notion of Lithuanian cinema in both social- might gain an understanding of ‘the nation’ ist and post-socialist contexts. When discussed (e.g. Siegfried Kracauer ([1947] 2004) or Lotte at all, Lithuanian film is referred to most often Eisner (1973) writing on Nazi Germany). More in discussions of Eastern Bloc or Soviet cinema. contemporary work, such as from Ib Bondebjerg More often, however, it is not discussed at all. (2003: 70−85) or George Faraday (2000), fol- To be certain, very little has been written on lowing Mikhail Bakhtin (1981), emphasises Lithuanian film outside of Lithuania since the the contested and dialogic nature of national Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. However, if we cinema. Further, as the era of globalisation un- take a closer look at the film’s cultural circula- dercuts the very efficacy of the nation-state, the tion in Lithuania, we find a scenario that calls efficacy of the concept of ‘national cinemas’ is for no less that a rethinking of our understand- bound to be questioned with it. Yet, socio-polit- ing of the notion of ‘national cinema’. ical globalising forces do not just gather power Briefly, my theoretical argument is that across and despite borders, but also realign Lithuanian national cinema per se existed and these borders in smaller, more localised units. functioned while Lithuania as a nation-state Thus, for example, the United Kingdom takes did not. To use the oft-quoted phrase of Ben- part in the legislative wing of the EU, the Euro- edict Anderson (1991), Lithuanian film was a pean Parliament, and has also agreed, as part site of ‘imagined community’ at a time when of an ongoing devolution process, to greater Soviet power strove to maintain firm control autonomy and lawmaking capacity for Northern over its Baltic republic. Further, I argue that Ireland, Scotland and Wales. upon the regaining of independence in an I am interested in thinking both about how increasingly globalised context, this national the term ‘national cinema’ might be applied in cases where the nation-state is a structuring absence and how this national cinema loses its 1 For more on Yiddish interwar cinema in Poland, see Paskin 1999. potency upon the re-emergence of its nation- state. How might we conceptualise national 2 A major retrospective of the latter was presented at the 2004 Rotterdam Film Festival. Entitled Once We Were cinemas that do not necessarily correspond to a Birds: Romani Cinema, it featured no less than 30 feature nation-state? One way to do this is through the films. This curatorial intervention in Holland prompted a similar (albeit more modest) program at the next year’s notion of diaspora—to look, for instance, at the Zagreb Film Festival. See festival information at www.film- body of work Iranian film-makers have produced festivalrotterdam.com and www.zagrebfilmfestival.com. 139 cinema collapsed from both internal and ex- referred to as ‘Eastern Europe’, as well as Euro- ternal causes. Not only did the national need pean studies generally.3 for representations and re-circulations of the nation dwindle after re-independence, but in- FREEDOM: JUST ternational interest in the Cold War ‘Other’ did ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING as well. LEFT TO LOSE? I begin this piece with a personal anecdote from the national premiere of Freedom (Laisvž, Šarūnas Bartas is the most internationally cel- 2000). A striking example of modernist cin- ebrated feature film-maker living in Lithuania ema, Freedom was a Lithuanian film seemingly today.4 In part, this has to do with his acumen intended for the international festival market in raising necessary capital: taking advantage rather than for domestic consumption. As a of the restructuring of the Soviet industry in the result, its lack of domestic success is perhaps late 1980s, he formed the first production com- no surprise. However, the additional failure of pany not directly controlled by the State. His Freedom to attract global attention makes the output has been a fixture on the international film sadly symbolic of the state of 21st century festival circuit since the 1991 film Three Days Lithuanian cinema. As such, the film serves as a (Trys dienos) won accolades in Berlin, includ- vivid introduction to the essay’s central concern: ing an International Film Critics’ FIPRESCI the negotiations grappled with by both Lithua- Prize, garnering interest from international nian film producers and consumers in an era of co-producers. Subsequent feature-film projects global change. The Corridor (Koridorius, 1995), Few of Us This disconnection between production (Mюsć nedaug, 1996) and The House (Namai, and consumption prompt my more detailed dis- 1997) all increased Bartas’s status as an auteur cussion in the following section involving ques- internationally. tions of national cinema, and the ways in which Yet while Bartas’s star rose over the film this notion dovetails with Anderson’s ‘imagined festival circuit abroad, in Lithuania his work communities’ in the Lithuanian context. The was discussed and read about more than actu- political and economic structure of Soviet film ally viewed—and even then, almost exclusively production calls for a rethinking of how we un- amongst urban intelligentsia. Indeed, outside derstand the function of national cinemas. Para- the capital city Vilnius, few people I talked to doxically, it appears that ‘Lithuanian national had ever heard of Bartas, and fewer still had cinema’ did in fact exist and was viable—but seen his films. Paradoxically, then, Bartas is only at a time when the Lithuanian nation was someone whose films have come to signify still subsumed within the Soviet state. Films in ‘Lithuania’ within international festival culture, the era of re-independent Lithuania have been while signifying almost nothing to most Lithua- fewer in number, largely unpopular with local nians themselves. audiences, and aimed more at global film festi- Bartas’s work places him squarely in the vals (with mainly European funding). This has realm of modernist film—which, of course, also left local audiences with the task of negotiating places his films decidedly outside of popular or their place in relation to output from Hollywood, mainstream cinema. Even audiences favourably Russia and the rest of Europe. Here, I specu- disposed to Bartas’s output can find his work late further about the application of theories overly opaque. In spring 2001, I attended the of national cinema to two different ‘regional national premiere of his latest feature film, along cinemas’: European and Baltic cinema. Can we with hundreds of other Lithuanian cinephiles, consider the European Union, for instance, to film enthusiasts, and fashionable salonć liюtai possess a national cinema? (And if so, what of (‘salon lions’)5 in the main hall of the fin- ‘European cinema’ outside the EU?) It is my est movie theatre in the country, the recently hope that my examination of questions such as renovated Lietuva (Lithuania). Freedom, a this will contribute to the (post-)post-Cold War Portuguese-French-Lithuanian co-production, literature on the cinema of the region (formerly) filmed entirely on location in Northern Africa, 140 had recently received significant local media at- by the giant LED subtitle display under the tention from its competitive entry at the Venice Lietuva’s wide screen. The danger, of course, is International Film Festival. Such international that such techniques construct a philosophical, acceptance heightened excitement and expecta- intellectual space that audiences may find off- tion on the national level, drawing an audience putting. In other words, a director’s Brechtian on par with new Lithuanian theatrical produc- device can too often be an audience’s invitation tions by top dramatists Eimuntas Nekrošius or to file out of the cinema. Indeed, I watched a Oskaras Koršunovas.6 number of people in the audience shifting nerv- Like these stage figures, Bartas carves out ously in their seats, suggesting that the director a kind of intellectual space in his films, signi- had missed his mark.