A specially tailored Vilnius screening of the rivetting 1972-1982 recently digitised short films of the late Lithuanian film auteur, co-founder with Artūras Slipavačius of avant-garde Pysche group IVTKYGYG, countercultural thorn-in-the-side and fop Artūras Barysas with footage lifted from the shelf including specially commissioned 2022 re-scored soundtracks by notable Lithuania Contemporary Composers, never-seen, pre-edited footage, out-takes, cine-communique from the deep-freeze of pre-Glasnost Lithuania plus selected original soundtracks collaged from Barysas’s legendary lost collection of late 20th-century pop & underground music. Music like the films expresses a sparky, effervescent satirical defiance against the po-faced rigidity of Homo Sovieticus.
Curators: David Ellis, Lijana Jakovlevna Siuchina
“Film as reverie, filmmaking as dissent”
Following the screening at Skalvija on the 20th of January curators David Ellis / Lijana Jakovlevna Siuchina will be joined by Arturas Barysas’ son Vytis Barysas, filmmaker Arturas Javdokimovas plus writer/musicologist Robertas Kundrotas for a digressive talk / Q&A on Barysas’ ideology-busting films, lesser-known aspects of his zigzagged proto-Punk D.I.Y ethos and the broader issues regarding filmmaking as dissent.
About Artūras Barysas
Prior to forming ‘Ir Visa Tai Kas Yra Gražu Yra Gražu’ (And Everything That is Beautiful, is Beautiful), the Lithuanian psyche-group, in 1987 with artist Arturas Slipavicius, the late countercultural fop, bibliophile, actor, connoisseur of experimental music Arturas Barysas wielded his Krasnogorsk-3 camera throughout the pre-Glasnost period of the 1970s, an era in which ‘longhairs’ and others in dissent against the Lithuanian Communist Party officially designated ‘delinquents’ risked ending-up face down in industrial slurry or worse, for possessing the wrong music, entertaining the ‘wrong thought’. Viewed retrospectively Barysas’s films are poignant cine-communiques capturing this Youth Quake, its cohort of ‘beautiful freaks’. Though difficult to attain during the 1990s, multiple-copied DVDs of the films were nonetheless trafficked between fans within the Baltics, throughout the Lithuanian diaspora including the UK, resulting in an eventual one-off screening at The Horse Hospital, London in 2002. For this, Barysas travelled a gruelling 48 hours by bus to London not as an ‘amateur film enthusiast’ but as a film auteur. Until his death in 2005, Barysas continued to be a thorn in the side of the buttoned-up, a renegade against the shiny world of Colors Benetton. Since 2021 having been re-evaluated as an artist, his films continue to be shown throughout Europe.
Duration: 72 min.
Age limit: N-13
