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“We started when people thought that documentaries are just talking heads on TV”. Interview with “Skalvija” CEO Vilma Levickaitė

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Tie2/Svitlana Kostrykina

This year Vinius Documentary Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary. For two decades it takes place in one of the oldest Vilnius cinemas – “Skalvija”. The location remains the same, but the festival has seen many other changes over the years. Vilma Levickaitė, “Skalvija” CEO, told us about those changes, about the festival program and its participant from Ukraine.

photo: Modestas Endriuška

This year – it is the 20th festival, and I wanted to ask you about the history of VDFF. How it started and has changed to our days?

It’s been a long journey. I took part in it since the year one. I was a student at that time, I was already interested in cinema very much, in film festivals, different film events and I helped the team who were organizing the festival. The main organizer, the initiator of the festival was a film critic Živilė Pipinytė. She started running the “Skalvija” cinema in 2001 and actually there weren’t many cinema events at that time. We had one festival or two festivals and that was it, the proposal for the audience was not so diverse. And at those times people had a very stereotypical idea about the documentary film in general, there wasn’t much knowledge about it. People used to think that documentaries are talking heads on television, various TV programs about nature, animals or whatever.

So Živilė decided to organize a film festival dedicated especially to documentary film, author cinema, artistic cinema, art films, so people could get to know more about this specific film form. And of course in the beginning it was very small. Something like up to 15 films. There wasn’t many programs, but if I remember correctly, the festival always had a retrospective dedicated to a specific filmmaker and a program dedicated to recent documentaries. And yeah, so it started small and the audience was small. But at the very beginning we understood that the festival has to have filmmakers coming and talking to the people. So this part also was very much appreciated and very important integral part of the festival.

photo: Modestas Endriuška

Also we had a competition for filmmakers from Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. So we had the competition since 2007 until 2014. Also it was very important for us to screen Lithuanian films, not only premieres, new films, but also to look back to the history and make different programs about filmmakers who were not discovered at that time. For example, this year we have a special program which was curated by our partners “Meno Avilys” and they present three films by Lithuanian filmmakers, a newly restored classics. So again, we are suggesting people to watch films we have as our heritage.

The website to watch digitally restored Lithuanian films

Now the festival is bigger, it takes place not only in Vilnius but in other cities as well. Our audience is not big in numbers, but it’s very interesting people, very qualitative audience who is very interactive. They participate in the Q&A sessions, they are interested in not easy themes, in a bit sophisticated film language, they are open and ready to absorb different kind of film.

So we started when people thought that it’s talking heads on TV. Now we have people who understand that documentary is just another film art form.

The festival actually started in this exact building, “Skalvija” Cinema Center?
Yes. It’s the only cinema that survived all the hard times and the closures of the cinemas. This house was built in 1961, the cinema opened in 1963. Originally it was a cinema with two screens and two entrances. The second one isn’t cinema anymore, it’s a space which is dedicated for film and media education and different activities, sometimes screenings but not DCP screenings. So actually it’s a very nice destiny and a very nice history for a place which was just a second screen cinema in the 60s – they used to screen what other bigger cinemas had screened for several weeks earlier.

Also “Skalvija” is the only cinema which is located in the residential building.

photo: Tomas Terekas

What is the structure of this year’s program?
So we have the main program with six recent films. Three of them are made by very famous directors, for example Werner Herzog or Claire Simon. Others are debuts. For example, Ukrainian director’s Maksym’s film is his graduation film, but nevertheless we consider them to be the same quality in terms of directing and approaching the subject idea.

Then we have Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub retrospective. We have a conference about essayistic form in a documentary and the organizers of the conference also curated special program Films they’ve chosen also represent the ideas they are talking about in that conference.

Also we have VR program, because we started being interested in new technologies and how documentary forms are entering all these kind of different storytelling and different medias. So we have two VR films which we like very much because it’s not very easy to find good VR projects. It’s developing still very, very much as a starting point for this kind of art form. So we have two great interactive films nicely animated and nicely narrated and they really justify the form being interactive VR experiences.

Then we have two Lithuanian premiers. As I mentioned, Lithuanian films are very important for us. So we really do our best to introduce new ones as well as the classics. This year we have two new good documentaries – “The Cabinet” by Živilė Mičiulytė and “Bogdanas Longs to Stay” by Marat Sargsyan.

This year we are starting a new program in our festival. Although we never considered ourselves to be conventional, now we even more want to search for experimental form and experimental thinking in documentary film. So we are starting a new program dedicated to it.

On our 20th anniversary we decided that we’re going to change a bit. And this was like a statement to choose a film from experimental program – “Last things” by Deborah Stratman – to screen in the opening.

Nowadays there are a lot of Ukrainian films which are documentaries about the war. But VDFF decided to choose different movie. Why?

Well, of course the background, the context is obvious and we can’t, you know, somehow put the theme of war out of it. But the main criteria why we liked it – it’s because Maksym approaches his characters in a way that we as programmers like in films. He becomes a protagonist himself. He managed to depict the human intimacy and he’s also very good at this observational style of documenting life. His portraits of people are very rich. Also, we liked to see Ukraine happy and peaceful. Of course, life is not easy there, but still Ukrainians are people who have lots of love and warmth.

photo: Modestas Endriuška

Do you have a short film program?

There isn’t a separate program dedicated to shorts. It’s not a specificity of our festival.
It’s a more thematically based choice than length. Shorts are either part of the Huillet and Straub program or part of the experimental films program.

Looking through all this 20 years: how did Lithuanian documentary films changed thematically?
It’s a tough question. Lithuanian documentary directors have always been very much interested in humanity in a very broad sense of this phenomena. Our best example from the past are really important documentaries which were trying to depict something which is undepictable. But you have to see the films to understand what I’m talking about. They are poetic documentaries. The most famous filmmakers are Audrius Stonys, Arūnas Matelis, they were young in 90s, but they are still active now. They were really appreciated internationally, not only locally.

Now some directors still try to continue this type of filmmaking, but young people are also interested in social themes and there are lots of good films which are very much experimental. For example, there was a very good film by Aistė Žegulytė about people who do taxidermy. But this film is not only about this kind of special community, it’s about life and death, about artificiality, about different materiality. It’s so much more.

And another film by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė – “Acid Forest” – was about about a forest which is dying because of the native cormorants. But it’s not about the birds actually. It’s about segregation, about stereotypes, about how people have their standpoints where they have no information to have that standpoint and they should have a more grounded opinion, be more nosy and open-minded, ask questions and think, not only shout that it’s black while it’s red or white.

This year we have one film that is an observational documentary about young people who live in a youth detention center. And the other one is about two journalists writing a book: they’ve made a journalistic research on our politicians. But it is also multi-layered. It’s not only about them but also about everybody who is trying to see the truth and the price of it.The truth is always hiding and it’s not so easy to to find it.

Is VDFF the only documentary event in Vilnius?
No, it’s not. We have another documentary film festival: Human Rights Film Festival “Inconvenient Films”.

Is there a competition in VDFF program?

No, we don’t have a competition program. It was until 2014, but we don’t make it anymore. This festival is not competitive, it’s not for industry, it’s for the people. Everything we do is for people, ordinary spectators.

photo: Modestas Endriuška

Who are they – your spectacors?
They read a lot. They participate in cultural events. They think, they are eager to know more, to discover. Demographically –more women than men, around 20-40 years old.

And for a final question: if someone after visiting VDFF decides to make documentary films by himself or herself, what would you advise to them?

Shoot, shoot, shoot, take the mobile phone and start shooting now. First, look closer in the surrounding, look closer at the people and then start doing something.

 

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