This November 7th through 10th, the second annual New York Baltic Film Festival took place at the Scandinavian House in Midtown Manhattan. Fourteen films from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were shown, with genres ranging from children’s animation, drama, documentary, comedy, and thriller. The festival’s theme this year honored the 30 year anniversary of the Baltic Way, which occurred August 23rd, 1989, when approximately 2 million people joined hands to form a live chain from Tallinn, Estonia, through Riga, Latvia, to Vilnius, Lithuania, in protest of Soviet occupation. It is considered by some as one of the greatest successful acts of non-violence protest in the 20th century.
Two of the films shown, Baltic Way and Baltic Freedom Way were a pair of documentaries that discussed the event, as well as the aftermath of the protest. Baltic Way is a ten minute documentary by Lithuanian directors Arūnas Matelis and Audrius Stonys, showing footage from the day of protest. Baltic Freedom Way is a Latvian film directed by Askolds Saulītis, which showed the three countries’ evolution from their declaration of independence from Russia in 1918, through the communist era, to the collapse of the soviet era, and into their nascent days as democratic countries. As stated in the film description, “weaving in memories of the past as well as contemporary victories, The Baltic Freedom Way shows both the cooperation and the competition between these three countries. It is a portrait of three sisters, in the free world and on the free market, who have remained side-by-side in both good times and in hardships.”
After the showing of these two films, there was a panel discussion with participants in the Baltic Way, which included the UN ambassador from Latvia, Andrejs Pildegovičs, as well as Saulītis. They discussed their emotions at the time of the Baltic Way and their involvement in the independence movements. Ambassador Pildegovičs talked about how, as a student in Moscow at the time, Russians would come up to him and express solidarity with the unrest in the Baltic States, and regret for what their country had done to them historically. He also shared roadblocks he encountered as a Latvian diplomat defending his nation’s interests in the world.
“We have to be, hyper vigilant, defending our interests, we always have to have microphones, the largest possible microphones, we have to sit by the highest tables in the world defending out interests…. Not everyone was welcoming our reappearance on the world stage. When I was ambassador to Washington, I had some disputes with some presidents, some people in Bush Administration, who were, eh, quite hesitant, to support us.”
Saulītis, and the director of the film, offered ways in which he believed and hoped that the ideals of the Baltic Way would help other protest movements around the world looking to stand against authoritarian powers. He discussed how the Baltic Way was a topic of discussion for protesters in Hong Kong, as they looked to find ways to make their voices heard around the world. Even thirty years later, the Baltic Way is able to offer inspiration to others with its powerful, peaceful message.
The film that began and ended the festival was Motherland, which made its North American debut. Written and directed by Tomas Vengris, a Lithuanian American, Motherland is the fictional story of a mother and son who return to Lithuania in 1992 to reclaim family land. When they discover that a poor Russian family has taken residence on the property, they must reconcile that their idea of a post-soviet Lithuania may not match the reality they encounter. In a Question and Answer session, Vengris stated that the film is based off of his own experiences going back to Lithuania with his family as a child after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Looking around at the audience of mostly fellow Baltic-Americans, he described the “wild west feeling during those early years”, as people scrambled to privatize or reclaim property.
While an emotional historical account, the film also explored the dynamic of family in the diaspora, as the son, Kovas, explores the country his mother grew up in for the first time. He is able to speak some Lithuanian, but is still very much the “American cousin”, with his fancy digital watch and a lack of local knowledge. The lead actor, Matas Metlevski, is a twelve year old boy who resides in Kansas, but returns to Lithuania to visit his family in the summer, allowing him to speak to the exact experiences Vengris aimed to portray in his film.
The Baltic Film Festival offered a moment of community for the diaspora community, as they were all able to gather and consume art that spoke to their common experience. Both older, soviet era Balts and newer generations were able to gather and nod along to shared cultural references and experiences of their beloved homelands.