Director | Anastasia Sosunova
Script | Anastasia Sosunova
Director of photography | Anastasia Sosunova
Editing | Anastasia Sosunova
Animators | Laurynas Keleras, Anastasia Sosunova
Sound designers | Andrej Romanov, Anastasia Sosunova
Composers | Daniel Birch, Lobo Loco, The 303
Production company | Rupert
Demikhov’s dogs were the result of experiments conducted by the Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov, who carried out the world’s first head transplant operations in 1954. During the course of these experiments, two-headed dogs – able to survive for a short period – were created.
In the video, Sosunova uses these experiments as a conceit through which to discuss experiences of cultural difference and the rifts of identity that riddle the region in which she was raised. Reflecting on her own experience of growing up in a Russian-speaking family on Lithuania’s periphery, she mixes historical research and creative fiction to examine tenuously constructed feelings of community and belonging. The footage used in the work was sourced from across the Baltic region, and is combined with chimeric animated realities and not quite Lithuanian stories.