The bestseller "Pietinia kronikas" by the Šiauliai Rimantas Kmitas, which is coming to Lithuanian cinemas on January 24, has already started its journey on the big screens. At foreign film festivals, it receives not only abundant applause from the audience, but also professional evaluations - for example, it won the Best Baltic Film Award at the Tallinn Film Festival.
In the film, viewers can see a lot of archival material, which will also be in the film - in the trailer it is interwoven with currently filmed footage. It was the search for authentic images that became one of the biggest challenges for the director Ignas Miškinis and his team.
"Searching the archives took no less time than finding the right actors or authentic locations. In fact, I planned to make almost a fifth of the film this way - to integrate the actors into archival footage. Unfortunately, this proved impossible. There are archives, but the shots, their duration, angles, camera movements were not very suitable for certain scenes and actions. Vytautas Starikovići went through all the archives, I looked through the boxes of Šiauliai, Argos TV and Šiauliai TV cassettes. We found a lot of interesting things, but not as much as I planned remained in the film. However, it helped to immerse and remember, to empathize. Maybe it even inspired a little. Moreover, Narvydus Naujalius and I analyzed the archival material for a long time and a lot of things in the film were shot originally, although maybe it can appear as an archive. That was the goal, that was my initial vision when I read Eglė Vertelytė's script and Rimant's novel. I realized that it is necessary to try to make the film look like it was made in 1993-1994. Otherwise it won't be interesting", - I. Miškinis tells about the difficulties in finding material for the tape.
One of the examples of how in the film old shots are supplemented with new, specially filmed ones, are the archival scenes of a very young Andrias Mamontov concert, which were edited with newly filmed shots of the film's heroes. This episode can be seen in the trailer of Pietinia kronikos:
I. Miškinis said that there were other difficulties during the making of the film. Šiauliai and the places described in history no longer resemble the old ones, so not only the location seekers, but also the film artists had to sweat.
"It is very lucky that Šiauliai is in order. In that sense, what is from the 90s is not neglected, not shabby. Of course, there were places that the artists needed to reanimate. There were also places, buildings that simply do not exist anymore. We changed the script, improvised, looked for places that fit the history and the era. And, of course, it would be suitable for Šiauliai. There were also times when you find an authentic corner, come back after a while, and everything has already been dug up. Even with South Boulevard it was like that. We were lucky because we still managed to film a small tip of it", - recalls the director.
How the filmmakers managed to return to the "wild" times of Šiauliai and revive some extremely bright scenes of the bestseller can still be seen out of the corner of the eye in the film's trailer.
The screening of the film can be ordered from January 24.
Director: Ignas Miškinis
Year: 2024
Country: Lithuania