Vilnius Documentary Film Festival
The 9th edition of the documentary fest in the capital of Lithuania takes place September 20-30. The opening film is Carlos Klein’s fine documentary Where the Condors Fly about Viktor Kossakovsky shooting his masterpiece Vivan las Antipodas. A prologue to a retrospective of the director’s work giving the audience the chance to watch great films like Belovs, Wednesday and Sviato – and of course Vivan las antipodas.
The festival has a strong competition programme with four films from each of the Baltic countries. From Estonia there are The New World by Jaan Tootsen and This is the Day by Kersti Uibo, the latter ”captures the flow and simple beauty of daily life in a monastery standing on a hill above the Serbian village of Velika Hoca in Kosovo”, to quote the webiste of the festival. From Latvia Laila Pakalnina comes with two works, Snow Crazy and 33 Animals of Santa Claus, and from the hosting country you find Giedre Zickyte’s How we Played the Revolution, Ramin by Audrius Stonys, Mindaugas Survila’s The Field of Magic (photo) and Goda Rupeikaite’s Variations on a Subject of Masks.
Furthermore there is a programme of films on beat poets and philosophy (Burroughs, Kerouac abd Ginsberg), and a panorama section with works like Planet of Snails and Private Universe by Helena Trestikova. All in all, an impressive artistic orientated selection. As last year where I was in the jury in Vilnius.