The Beginning :: 05. 4.04
In the fall of 2000 I'd just arrived in Kupiskis, Lithuania as a US Peace Corps volunteer. I had the idea early in college to go into the Peace Corps. When I graduated I received a letter from my Dad encouraging me to look into it, and the rest is history. I pulled into Kupiskis on a rusty bus on a rainy September day and remained there for the next two years. Among the most formative events and relationships of my adulthood (so far) stand a few special people who I met in Lithuania. Included among them is Gintaras Petrikas. He and his family were my closest friends in Kupiskis and I spent numerous summer days on his small farm and many evenings at his apartment during the long winters. Among the stories he told me, lays the seed that started this one. His uncle had been a partisan during the war. They called themselves the Forest Brothers and they fought an unsupported guerilla war against the Soviet occupation that lasted ten years. Gintaras showed me how his uncle used to sleep in the forest. Sitting up, he kept one hand on his leg one hand on his rifle. He spent years sleeping like that. It was completely different than how I would have imagined it and that made it interesting. The next two years passed with a density of events and experiences that would normally fill five years, but that story stuck out.
When I returned to the states I started grad school at Cal Arts. I knew about the Fulbright grant and gave it serious attention. In April of 2004, I received notice from the Fulbright commission that I'd received a grant to make my proposed thesis film in Lithuania. The film is about the last few men in a Lithuanian partisan unit and how they meet their ends. It'll be shot in the Lithuanian language all on location. The working title is Tiger, Oak and Echo. The guys who fought often used code names to protect themselves and their families from Soviet retribution. I choose to use them cause they're authentic but more importantly it helps those who aren't familiar with Lithuanian culture follow the story. This blog is a way for me to keep my friends, family, and faculty in the loop while I'm gone and a way to document all the hilarious and heart breaking obstacles that accompany any film production.
Reality Check :: 05.10.04
Now that I know I'm going back to Lithuania, the dream of making this film remains but I'm also starting to realize how much work is in front of me.
The good news is that I may have found a producer. I contacted a woman named Greta who went to film school in the UK and Denmark, and she's willing to help. I'm kind of shocked. She thought the project was interesting and is willing to work for whatever I can pay. I sent her the script and she's going to break it down and do a budget. It'll be interesting to see what she comes up with.
The other good news is that Dave Fenster is serious about coming with me to shoot it. His help would be a godsend.
The script has been tough to this point and is getting tougher. The more I read about the era, the murkier it gets. Everybody was killing everybody, it was horrific. Germans and Lithuanians killing Jews. Lithuanians killing Russians and Lithuanians. Russians killing everybody. Communists, nationalists, fascists, priests, farmers, teachers, you name it.
I took a timeline that breaks the major events of partisan war down and started to reconstruct the whole thing on a map. I can't see any patterns yet, but it's interesting how much was taking place in the smallest villages. The beginning of the war seems to have played out in the most rural areas very far from the centers.
The most pressing problems with the writing have to do with the daily life of the partisans. What did they eat, what did they wear, how did they pass the time, what did they talk about? There is quite a bit of documentation about the major events of the war but little about the life these people were leading in the forests and it reflects in my script. Lots of plot so far, now it needs substance.
At the moment the piece is set around 1945, after the Jewish holocaust in Lithuania. So in terms of characters/events the Jewish history isn't present in my script. I've been urged by the faculty to address it but I've been reluctant. I'm really afraid of getting it all wrong. There aren't any Jews in Lithuania anymore (a VERY small number). I just feel like that story is way too important to address in a superficial or secondary way. One thought I've had is to represent it exactly as it was (in 1945). Jews were gone by then, but they left behind synagogues, cemeteries, homes and property. I wonder if I can tell some of that story by simply showing that they are not there at all.
This page contains all entries posted in May 2004. They are listed from oldest to newest.
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