The film will be introduced by film critic, curator, and culture columnist Monika Gimbutaitė.

'Vakar ir visados' was made and immediately banned in the same year as featured in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Against all odds, the film made an indelible impression on the public imagination of Lithuanians in the late Soviet period and beyond.

Co-written with poet Marcelijus Martinaitis, Vakar ir visados borrows its name from one of his poems. The poet appears along with folklore singer Veronika Pavilionienė in the filmic encounter between the present and the past. The film is steeped in regional visuals and sounds, such as spoken word, folk songs, and spells that encapsulate what the creative team envisaged to represent the Lithuanian identity. Unlike the institutionally curated Soviet narratives of ethnic histories, Vakar ir visados reimagined the soundscape of traditional crafts and indigenous rituals in such a way that upset the Soviet bureaucracy.

Although created specifically for TV, the film was illegally screened for 3 years across Lithuania and beyond. Legendary Sergei Parajanov organized a secret show in Georgia. As the director reminiscences, each show amounted to a social event with Martinaitis and Povilionienė performing to the singing audience.

Vakar ir visados will be introduced by Monika Gimbutaitė, the film critic, curator, and culture columnist, and Daniel Bird, the writer, filmmaker and one of the leading curators of Eastern European films, who will unravel, amongst other things, what censors found so upsetting about the poetic language of the film.

Monika has previously worked as a culture editor for a news portal, held the role of CEO at a publishing house, and did programming for various film festivals. Currently, she is working on her PhD thesis about film policy in contemporary Lithuania. Daniel has curated numerous retrospectives and overseen film restorations, including that of Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates.

Supported by the Lithuanian Embassy in London, the film’s screenings are a part of the Un.censor.ing symposium on cultural heritage resilience and censorship organised and curated by Dr Gabriele Salciute Civiliene, and presented by the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.

The film will be screened in its original language – Lithuanian, with English subtitles.