The Chameleon West: Lithuania as a Set for Soviet Cinema
Vilnius and Kaunas often stood in for Western cities in Soviet films. Does this still fuel misperceptions about the Baltic states in the Soviet era?Continue Reading →
"The Forest Is in Our DNA": Lithuania's Ancient Woods
"We can be proud that we have these in Lithuania, because in Western Europe these were already gone a hundred years ago"Continue Reading →
Jazz, Instinct and Meaning: Tomas Kutavičius and Contemporary Lithuanian Music
Claire McGinn speaks to Lithuanian composer Tomas Kutavičius, and takes the pulse of contemporary art music in VilniusContinue Reading →
Sad Eyes: Earthy Psychedelia from Vilnius's Curly One
"Vilnius's music scene is a hotbed of surprising talent over which the spirit of Garbanotas soars high and mighty..."Continue Reading →
Bridges of Time: How Baltic "Poetic Documentaries" Exposed Soviet Reality
"They helped audiences to learn to see... not only to watch, but to see. To see and think and read between the lines."Continue Reading →
Remembering Jonas Mekas: the Lithuanian Refugee Who Changed American Film
Jonas Mekas captured '60s NYC, filming John Lennon and the Velvet Underground, while making groundbreaking experimental films and writing poetry in his native languageContinue Reading →
Learning Yiddish and Searching for Jewish Lithuania: Laura Esther Wolfson
Laura Esther Wolfson's collection of non-fiction covers the author’s life and travels in the United States, France and the former Soviet Union, including a couple of interludes in LithuaniaContinue Reading →
Harvest of Wetland: Images of a Remarkable Lithuanian Allotment
In 2002, frustrated with the long journey to legally receiving an allotment, a self-governed space was established by a group of pensioners on a piece of wetland in Šiauliai, Lithuania.Continue Reading →
"It Flew Like a Shooting Star": Sartre and De Beauvoir's Week in Soviet Lithuania
In July 1965, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir arrived in Soviet-occupied Vilnius. Their week-long stay in Lithuania was to leave a deep impressionContinue Reading →
Siberian Exile: Blood, War and a Granddaughter's Reckoning
Siberian Exile tells the story of the author's grandmother, Ona, deported to deepest Siberia during Lithuania's occupation by the Soviet UnionContinue Reading →
"Someone Always Pays": Siberian Exile and Nazi Collaboration in a Single Family
An interview with the Lithuanian-Canadian author Julija Šukys, whose most recent book found her unearthing troubling secrets about her family's pastContinue Reading →
Fiction: Jaroslavas Melnikas – "The Grand Piano Room"
"What was strange was not the fact that the piano room had disappeared, but that it had ever actually existed"Continue Reading →