‘Mariupolis 2’ might nor be the strongest testament of Kvaderavičius’ filmmaking, but it is a testament of his humanity and the strength of his belief in his mission, and it also is a devastating testimony of the dark times we live in.
‘A Bunch of Amateurs’ a heart-warming group portrait of a very special bunch laced with the typically dry, but actually well-meaning English humour.
The first impression of this slow-burner might be a bit misleading, due to the filmmaker’s and his cinematographer choices of usually long static, mid-to-long distance takes from lower racourses and “Dutch” angles.
When is the right time to give up on our dreams, face the music and accept our fate?
It all starts with a bang, an explosion after which the objects, abstract and concrete, and later the animals and the people move straight to the imaginary camera.
Maybe the apocalypse will look like children’s drawings, mixed with geometrical abstraction done in wax colours over the black background.
‘Bird in the Peninsula’ is simply magnetic
Animated in gentle fashion, with simple, child-like drawings as the founding material, ‘In the Upper Room’ is a proper coming-of-age film that speaks loudly enough to both the younger and grown-up audiences.
The whole film is a collage of amateur home films dating mainly from the 60s and 70s, depicting the things from the ordinary lives of the ordinary people in their so-called free time.
