The Curonian Spit sounds like a place-name found on the map sheet of a fantasy novel. It also looks unreal. Part of the narrow peninsula belongs to Lithuania and part to Russia – but its real masters are the great cormorants. Thousands of these birds have settled in the pine forests of the Curonian Spit and transformed the area into a ghostly landscape. The trees have lost their needles, faded into greyness, dried standing or fallen down. Just what has happened and what is man’s part in all of this?
The Lithuanian theatre and film director and cinematographer Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė lets the birds tell the story. The cormorants’ coarse calls never cease as the camera glides over the forest and rises to the level of withered pine tops. Down below, on ground level, tourists come from Europe, Asia and the United States to wonder at the catastrophe-like view. Bits of speech are carried up to the tree branches. Some admire, others are stunned, everybody is confused. A Finnish man would grab a gun and shoot the evildoers. A meditative film about our alienation from the nature’s cycles and about the blind spots of man-centred thinking.
Anna Möttölä / Translation: Mikko Kuusimäki
Language: Lithuanian
Subtitles: English
- Name in Original Language: Rūgštus miškas
- Director: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
- Country: Lithuania
- Year: 2018
- Length: 63 min
- Age limit: null
- Cinematography: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
- Editing: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
- Music: Dovydas Korba
- Production: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Dovydas Korba / Neon Realism
Showtimes:
- Cinema Artis, hall 2 : Sunday, 03.02 - 14:30