Monika Gimbutaitė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/MIS/2024.16.8
What insights into a country’s film policy can unrealised film projects provide? This article explores the unsuccessful historical film competition announced in 2006 to commemorate the millennium of the first recorded appearance of the name of Lithuania — a competition that ultimately yielded no film. Publicised in the media and even facing legal issues, this example of cultural planning failure has received little academic interest, despite revealing significant tensions within Lithuania’s film policy field.
By analysing archival documents and public discourse, this article reconstructs the competition, and explores the clash of historical narratives between two of the competition’s first-stage winners (Raimundas Banionis’ project Žalgiris — The Day of Iron and Šarūnas Bartas’ Margiris), as well as the goals that political institutions wanted to impose on the production of the historical film. Not aiming to provide a comprehensive review of Lithuania’s film policy during the examined period, the article focuses on decision-making tendencies revealed within the framework of this competition, which may have influenced the broader landscape of Lithuanian cinema.
The analysis highlights several key aspects. Firstly, it demonstrates the state’s attempt to use cinema as a way to achieve its representational goals both at home and abroad, as demonstrated by the clash of historical narratives in the public field and the competition with the Polish interpretation of the Battle of Grunwald. Secondly, decisions were made bypassing the Cinema Council, politicising the competition and involving the Ministry of National Defence, despite cinema being outside its area of expertise. Finally, the analysis revealed the state’s inability to provide the necessary conditions and financial resources to implement the winning project, even though it had been selected by the politicians themselves.
Keywords: Žalgiris—The Day of Iron, Margiris, historical film, film policy