“The Mammoth Hunt” is a story about a film reel that for many years has been thought to be lost. On the reel, under conspiracy conditions, an abolished anti-Soviet theatre performance had been documented nearly 50 years ago – a play that served as a cross-section of the period revealing the universal subjects of courage, conformation, loyalty and betrayal.
The Golden Moose restaurant was a Turku legend. An old-fashioned funky establishment, opened in 1968 and seemingly never having changed since then. A meeting place for friends and family. A shrine for hundreds of locals. A place many called home. A family – for those who served there, as well as those being served. Now, in December 2016, the building has been bought by a major Finnish retail corporation in order to open a new supermarket, and the restaurant has to close its doors forever…
Lithuanian photographer, the legend of Soviet Sixties' generation Vitas Luckus tragically passed away in 1987. Yet the life and times of the talented rebel still impassion and lead us to a journey questioning why, at all times, we are wary of those who are really free.
During the Swedish-Lithuanian war 300 years ago, the bell of the Plateliai church was apparently dismantled and then left to sink at the centre of the eponymous lake. Stonys followed a scientific diving expedition organised for the purpose of finding the disappeared bell and thus confirming what seems like a popular legend. Like in Countdown, the filmmaker widens his consideration of collective memory and the bringing into crisis of belief.
Sorrow does not come merely from contemplating death, which forces us to look into Eternity, but also from life, which compels us to confront Time", wrote Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev. Renowned Lithuanian documentarist Audrius Stonys took these words as a motto for his latest film, a meditative visual essay which portrays old people undertaking all kinds of activities, meditation and group laughter therapy. Without a single word of commentary, he creates from sophisticated, aesthetic images a compelling study of human corporeality which, in an ideal union with spiritual equilibrium, can sustain us with the pledge that old age doesn't have to be a painful wait for the last breath.
Felix, a 12-year-old boy from outer space, during the summer holidays gets admitted into a summer children's sports camp. Few people know in the camp that Felix is not there by chance, and a few days ago he was created in a school laboratory because a space intellect sent him as an agent to planet earth to study humans. He is assisted by an ordinary boy Boris and a teacher who explains Felix local traditions and customs.
