Aiste Žegulytė: Holy Destructors

The Envision competition, according to the IDFA festival, “shows unparalleled, stylistically arresting films, where visionary filmmakers forge new cinematic languages.” Lithuanian Aiste Žegulytė´s new film fits perfect to this definition. Her film is innovative, to say the least; it is attractive and fascinating, surprising in its narrative, serious and full of humour, and full of admiration for the Lithuanian conservators, who are in the film, doing their holy work restoring the skeletons of important noble people and altar pieces, to be shining like never before.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” or “Of land you have come to the earth you must be” – it is a film about death. And Life. More precise, bringing death to life. Of course it is, seen through the screen’s microscope circle that is what we look through almost through the whole film, and yet the circle is a few times changed to images of fungi growing and shrinking, flourishing like flowers; it’s like psychedelic experimental films, pure beauty.

An enormous research lies behind this film. Žegulytė knows her art history and she has found beautiful paintings from way back, some look like Brueghel, mostly she has chosen faces, and when the elderly lady is cleaning a painting and puts a tear in the eye of a woman, she also “put” a tear in my eye. The film has several emotional moments and at one point I think I heard from the excellent soundtrack a variation of “Autumn Leaves” composed by Joseph Kosma. Anyway, the film has a melancholic tone and its own rhythm.

The archive beginning is amazing putting documentary clips from our lives under the microscope. From birth to death. And then some cells floating around… what is this, I thought the first time I saw the film on my Mac, the next time, right now, I have seen the film on a big tv screen enjoying fully the images, being entertained and informed about how art pieces and corpses are being revived by dedicated conservators, who bring the past to the present. Incredible film!

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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