Friday, November 21, 2008

"Ad Hoc: Inconvenient Films" Human Rights Films Festival, Vilna, Lithuania 29.-31.10.2008


"Ad Hoc: Inconvenient Films" website

HUMAN RIGHTS AND AN ATMOSPHERE OF YOUTH


From the airport straight to the screening via the hotel. I take a quick shower, and grab the Ruhnama and other props to take with me. The organisers have a surprise: they have managed to get the Lithuanian translation of the Ruhnama, which we then present to the audience alongside the English one. The Irish oil company Emerol translated the Ruhnama into both Lithuanian and Latvian. As the book couldn’t be translated into English twice and as there was a Lithuanian on the company’s managerial board, the book was translated into two new languages. By means of this, Emerol crowned its success in Turkmenistan.

The screening is full, and people have a lot of questions. The film’s cinematographer Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen has also come along for the trip, and we answer the audience’s questions together. In a couple of weeks Vitikainen will represent the film alone in Bosnia and Hercegovina, so the Q&A session is a good warm-up for him.



Cinematographer HP Vitikainen, festival director
Gediminas Andriukaitis and the Lithuanian and English Ruhnamas

The festival’s human rights theme does not appear to put people off - more like the other way round. The audience is also plentiful in other screenings. This festival is in its second year. The organisers are young, but so is the audience. - 95% of the audience are under 30, which is something of an exception. Usually the festival audiences are varied, with a younger crowd often forming the majority, but older viewers are also found. I wonder what Lithuanian over-30s do with their spare time?



Festival audience in Vilnius

The cleaner wakes me up in the morning. Enters the hotel room by accident, gets confused and leaves. I am also feeling confused: where am I?

No comments: