How many Lithuanian animated films have you seen? Until I decided to write this article, I had seen none, and believe me, not for the lack of trying! It is almost impossible to find Lithuanian animation on DVD or online, the only yearly collection that I know of is created by Lithuanian Shorts for educational and promotional purposes and, therefore, is not for sale. Lithuanians also seem to prefer other genres to animation, which shows us our word reimagined with new elasticity in terms of space and time as it is drawn, manipulated to life and does not exist outside of the screen. This gives me even more reasons to direct my attention to this genre: why do we shy away from it? Is it a question of artistic and technical skill, patience in having to draw each frame or a historically formed instinct to view stories that do not seem real or relevant with suspicion? And if the stories seem irrelevant, is that the fault of the audience or the stories themselves we choose to tell via this medium?

Animation is a genre that completely fell outside of our radar after Lithuania has regained its independence. For the lack of our own product, the new generation still grew up on the old Soviet cartoons which we call “the good animation”, based on their promotion of friendship, kindness and appreciation of community as well as (at least for me) the choice to animate the tales without changing their original narrative. In the late 1990’s, American and Japanese animation took over but there was still nothing Lithuanian in sight apart from an odd animated short that was never on television and, therefore, remained underappreciated. The genre has recently reappeared in film festivals and cinemas. The festival animation, which is also short and made on a budget, is experimental, with psychedelic elements and meant to make us aware of the fluidity of our unconscious thought. Animated films shown in theatres, however, are more commercially minded: they are tales meant for the child audience yet disguised under a more inclusive “for the entire family” tag.  We have produced two feature length animated films so far: Gustavo Nuotykiai (trans. The Adventures of Gustav, Augustinas Gricius, 2014) and Aukso Žirgas (trans. The Golden Horse, Reinis Kalnaellis and Valentas Aškinis, 2014). This is a clear indication of the first – rather uncertain – steps towards the revival of this genre: The Adventures of Gustav is a feature animation and The Golden Horse is a joint production between Lithuania, Latvia, Luxemburg and Denmark, which secures bigger investments and audience for a genre struggling to compete with the Disney corporation.

There is also the third type of animation which has been utilised continuously but has never had a voice of its own – the educational content. This ranges from social initiative, to business adverts, to interactive museum displays, and finally reaches what Lithuanians consider to be the overall purpose of animation as a genre – the platform, helping us to instil the Lithuanian values into our children. Being a small nation with a complex history, we are often concerned about continuation of tradition and anxious when it comes to accepting change. Our creative industry is geared for helping us feel confident in the continuation of our national memory. In other words, this type of animation is never created to be admired for itself; rather, it is there to compliment another object or idea.

In the Lithuanian educational environment, which traditionally views technology as invasive and somewhat debilitating, educational animation has been attributed with various rewarding qualities: it is essential for the survival of our folklore and the national character (Gabija Jakutytė ”Bernardinai”). Unsurprisingly, this happens to be the most funded (please note – animation in Lithuania receives hardly any funding at all), the most mainstream and, therefore, traditionally entertaining type of animation. But it would not be a truly Lithuanian product if we did not include documentary in the process. The same educational animation, merged with documentary content, becomes a hybrid genre that retains the sophistication and indexicality of documentary while shedding its didactic nature and replacing it with a touch of creativity – the animated documentary.

Overall, we are not too keen on computerised animation (CGI). CGI requires different type of skills and costlier equipment, however, it is our keenness to preserve the traditionally indexical relationship between the animator and his or her work, the past and its current observers that keeps us away from CGI. Majority of cartoons that we have released are, notably, made by art school students or artists who have primarily been trained in fine arts and animation is yet another platform for them to showcase their talent and employ their skills: the most popular choices are cell animation, where each frame is hand-drawn (like in The Golden Horse), and stop motion animation, where the artist combines pictures of an object in order to create the idea of movement (like in claymation Sausra (trans. Draught, Agnė Kupšytė, 2015)). Drawing, especially, requires the artist’s physical involvement not only in terms of brush strokes but also enactment: animator Jūratė Leikaitė in her description of the creative process has mentioned that the artist tries out the poses in front of the mirror to make sure they are realistic prior to drawing them on the light pad. In this unusual way, although imagined, the animated figures emerge through the body of their creator.

As animation has only now started to gain presence, we are more preoccupied with admiring the technique and movement of the objects and shapes rather than paying attention to the narrative development. The characters tend to be quite simplistic, their actions are motivated by their visual execution rather than narrative motivation and the storyline can sometimes feel rigid and clichéd. Moved by the excitement of having something of our own, we can easily overlook that some of these animations play out obsolete gender roles, like in the case of the two existing feature length animations: adventures are for the boys and the girls are there to look pretty, be saved and make the male hero appear stronger. In the ‘stream-of-consciousness’ animation, the narrative is absent but the plot is fulfilled through the visual associations that the transforming animated shapes prompt. This is a unique animation technique, and we should show more appreciation towards it.

Fluid Thoughts and Kafkaesque Visions

A considerable number of films fit into this category of experimental animation. In fact, unconventional animation gives the largest annual yield amongst Lithuanian animated content but it nonetheless makes a complicated topic. The only thing that unites these animated works is the organisation of thought – the topics, execution, length and ideas can be numerous and diverse. If you follow the Lithuanian Shorts publications, you are bound to find such animations selected for their DVDs every year: Šalti Šaltiniai (trans. Cold Springs, Giedrė Narušytė Boots, 2015), Tiltas (trans. Bridge, Ieva Miškinytė, 2007), Užribis (trans. Outside, Greta Stančiauskaitė, 2012), Nepriklausomybės Diena (trans. Independence Day, Urtė Budinaitė, 2012), to name a few. Some of the shorts, like previously mentioned Draught, subvert this unregulated flow of thought by placing limits on its characters, such as enclosing them in one room with nothingness looming beyond its walls and making them execute repetitive, pointless tasks, reminiscent of Kafka’s narratives. Other animations transfix us with their perfectly developed fluid vision which is at the centre of these non-verbal non-narratives.

The best examples of the latter are Pajauta (trans. Sense, Kazimieras Šalčiūnas, 2012), Saga (trans. The Button, Ieva Miškinytė, 2012) and Man Reikia (trans. I Need, Valentas Aškinis and Jūratė Leikaitė, 2008). Sense explores the subconscious flow of our senses, The Button depicts one object’s journey and uses its shape to incentivise narrative transformations, and I Need stretches the lines and curves of its characters, showing how susceptible they are to their environment. All three films are marked by an impressive level of plasticity in their visual execution. The surreal journey of a button in The Button starts by a landscape stretching into laundry, weaving itself down to a girl carrying a laundry basket with a detached button. We swivel into the basket together with a fish that swallows the button and becomes a crescent moon, which is then surrounded by embracing hands – a sign of connection, setting up the tone for the button’s purpose in the story. The hands and moon turn into an eye which cries egg tears and seeds a heart. The round shape of the button transforms into various round objects throughout its journey back to the girl: coffee mug, bird egg, seed that grows into a heart in a man’s chest, corresponding to a hole in the girl’s chest, left by the button’s absence. Once discovered, the button is used as a monocle which allows the man to see the girl and this way connects these two strangers.

A similar technique is used in Sense, only instead of providing us with a narrative, the story line is pieced together by a string of sensations. The introductory quote from Joe Vitale states that instead of capturing our feelings we should allow them to flow freely. This one minute short, reminiscent of a 1990’s video game, attempts to show us how feelings communicate to us when we observe them rather than engaging them. The images are not there to make sense on a cognitive level, however, they generate a mechanical forward movement, compelling the spectator to take pleasure in their unexpected visual relationship. To give an example on what transformation looks like in this short, God’s eye releases a blood stream, which bounces from the clouds and electrocutes crucified Jesus, continuing relentlessly to the faceless crowd below. One of the men moves down and an IV bag emerges from his skull, which connects to a bird feeder through a vein. The bird feeder links to a tree trunk, which releases an air balloon. The balloon collapses on a sprawling pregnant female, her breasts fill two glasses with blood and she gives birth to the same supernatural lifeline, which breaks through the floor into another dimension.

I Need presents an unusual kind of flexibility incarnate in a mother’s body which bends and stretches to accommodate the demands of her children as their bodies coexist in a necessary disharmony to hers. The children’s vocabulary is limited to phrases “I want” and “I need” while they run around, wreaking havoc, and the mother is stretching the boundaries of her own body in order to provide for these bottomless wants and needs. At the end, the mother’s heart cannot stand her inability to fully satisfy, it stretches her chest and explodes, killing her. The children cannot comprehend the sadness of the situation and continue to demand for things from the grave. The story completes the full circle when the children turn into parents themselves and they suddenly find themselves in the role of the provider.

Documenting Fairytales

When animation is used to preserve the Lithuanian folk stories and tradition as well as engage with them in a new way, we should not be surprised by the familiarity of these tales. The Golden Horse, being a co-production, is a mesh of narratives such as sleeping beauty, Disney-like villain and her sidekicks as well as faint references to the Baltic pagan culture and a motif from Jonas Biliūnas’s tale “Laimės Žiburys” (trans. “The Light of Happiness”) – the source of happiness on a tall mountain that everyone is trying to reach but die attempting. This original tale is animated in Antanas Skučas’s Anykščių Krašto Padavimai (trans. The Myths from Anykščiai, 2016) together with other regional myths, explaining the town and river names in a new medium. The box office entertainment value of these stories may not be high but they definitely have a potential to stay and will be preserved and used as an in-class entertainment.

The most interesting work in this category is the Lithuanian animated folk fest and tale cycle by Jūratė Leikaitė: Paparčio Žiedas (trans. Fern Blossom, 2003), Užgavėnės (trans. Shrovetide, 2005), Marti iš Jaujos (trans. The Bride from the Barn, 2006) and Margučių Rytas (trans. Easter Morning, 2007). These four shorts were intended as a cycle with the mission to give new breath of life to the Lithuanian traditions that have been slowly losing their authenticity and slipping into the realm of commercialised bank holidays. In this case, animation is thoroughly researched and the story is carefully crafted to best present the multiple aspects of each celebration in short time and for young audiences. Just like in I Need, the image is equipped with an unusual kind of plasticity: bodies and the environment stretch, distorting each other’s proportions, animation interacts with photographs and folk art, and the objects, just like in The Button, are compelled by the story line rather than the law of gravity.

In Easter Morning, the Easter tales are narrated by a grandmother who is teaching her granddaughter the egg painting traditions. The egg is magical, its intricate patterns are placed on its shell by nature yet the image is ever-evolving like a mirage from a wishing well, conveying the idea that the world, born from an egg, is ever changing – yet another example of the rule-breaking plasticity, inherent in Leikaitė’s animation. In Fern Blossom, the midsummer night festivities are incorporated into the storyline: people sing and dance around the fire, girls send their flower wreaths down the river while guys are trying to claim them and the youth head to the forest to look for the mythical fern blossom which allows the lucky finder to see buried riches. The story resembles a hallucination, summoned by looking at a fern leaf, with bodies stretching and snapping back to the music of the devil band, hearts leaping from chests and happiness literally giving the characters wings. A different kind of engagement is offered by Shrovetide as the animator plays with multiple visual dimensions (see pictures above): the filmed, the cropped and the drawn. Stop motion movement is incorporated into the animated and filmed ones, giving them extra edginess and rhythm. The point of interest here is the different masks that surface in the background and the characters wear as part of the festivities. They are both drawn, cropped as well as designed by using these multiple media to create new shapes and patters, which allows a normally imaginary genre to show authentic ethnographic patterns. The Bride from the Barn is a folk tale, brought to life by animating wood-block prints from late 19^th century. The plasticity here is limited in order not to distort the pre-existing image, however, the full length of this animation is dedicated to not only narrating this pre-existing folk tale but also to preserving the ethnographic art form of wood-block printing. These four animations create a cycle, allowing the viewer to experience the seasonal traditions and the mythology surrounding them through tales.

Unlocking Emotion

It is no secret that Lithuania produces more documentaries than films in any other genre, so it should not come as a surprise that we experiment with different techniques on how to enrich the documentary content, including using animation. There is nothing childish about this type of animation. In fact, it plays a very important yet often undervalued function of giving access to the thoughts and feelings of the characters which are predominantly left out of fact-focused documentaries. When the subjects of the documentary can be interviewed, this gap between facts and experiences is removed by witness accounts. However, if those are impossible to obtain and only written depiction is accessible, animation livens the storyline and allows visual access to the subject’s emotions.

Gyveno Senelis ir Bobutė (trans. Once Lived Grandpa and Grandma, Giedrė Beinoriūtė, 2007), gives us a comprehensive display of how animation helps a documented narrative, and I have written about it in more length here. It is a documentary about one family’s experiences in exile, narrated by a little girl who has not lived through these experiences but is telling us how she understands them from what her elders have told her. The photographs are not enough to tie the story together as they are static snippets of the past life that can bear no action or emotion and, additionally, are unable to give us access to the narrator’s point of view. This is where the animation comes in: to visualise metaphors, such as ‘crosses looking towards Lithuania’; to depict senses, such as the smell of apples escaping from a parcel; to let emotion seep onto the photographic record, like the visualisation of despair when the family is not allowed to return home; or to link the photographs through action which happened but was never recorded, like walking through deep snow or traveling to Siberia on a cattle wagon.

As this documentary is of a small scope and highly personal, imagination can be justified and enriches the record which would not be the case for historical documentaries with a broader topic: who can justify one person’s imagination describing the experiences of large groups of people, no doubt each of them having their individual take on the situation? Using animation in such cases would damage the value of the record by creating an obvious controversy which can be called ‘writing over history’ and stripping the people involved from their right to vocalise their own experiences. The danger of monopolising history casts a shadow on every documentary but it can be avoided if the documentary does not make sweeping claims towards its own accuracy and political correctness. In fact, the best documentaries are those which are able to make the viewer aware of the film’s own faults and potential bias. Animation is one of the ways to do it as it automatically signals the fictional nature of the image, filtered through the artist’s perception and actively constructed.

Vabzdzių Dresuotojas (trans. The Bug Trainer, Linas Augutis and Rasa Miškinytė, 2008) is another example of a constructive application of animation in a documentary. The documentary subject’s life is revealed through his creations: his animated dolls. The bug that falls in love with the lioness doll looks for his creator – the bug trainer Ladislas Starewitch – in order to discover how to breathe life into her and through his journey finds out about Ladislas’s life and work. Animation here is used to make the documentary front-facing interview structure more emotionally engaging without interfering with the content of the actual story as there are two separate narratives set up to complement each other: that of Ladislas and that of the bug. The bug does not give opinions or narrate but listens and applies the knowledge imparted in the documentary. The uplifting nature of this animation – finding love and fighting for it – accentuates the magical side of Ladislas’s films, making the documentary more accurate.

We Improve Every Year

There is a long way to go until we can point to animation as a genre of our own, tamed to our lifestyles, creative expectations and radiating hope, tailored to curb our national anxieties. For now, animation only appears in niche film festivals as an innovative way to tell already familiar stories, yet every year we release new narratives that are less surprised by their technical abilities than their predecessors and are starting to explore the possibility of using animation to depict current actualities rather than the past. This year, 2017, the taste of subtle coming-of-age nostalgia, dusted with a light coat of casual miracles, allows us to access our own emotional memories in Kaukai (trand. Running Lights, Gediminas Šiaulys) and Berniukas, Kuris Niekada Nekirpo Plaukų (trans. The Boy Who Never Cut His Hair, Tomas Tamosaitis and Rasa Joni). Every animated story we make feels innovative just because we do not have enough of a portfolio to know whether we have a clear direction, whether these stories are building on the ones made before. However, I hope we will continue to seek inspiration from personal narratives that drive our passions and touch upon our routine actions as these are the fiercest advocates of the extraordinary everyday we so long to hear more about.

Link to Lithuanian Shorts: http://www.lithuanianshorts.com/

Some animated films can be found in https://www.kinofondas.lt/