See a moving journey through the lives of Lithuanian actors of different generations in Life After Death (Gyvenimas po mirties, dir. Nerijus Milerius, Lithuania, 2022)! Following the screening director Nerijus Milerius will be in conversation with Viktoras Bachmetjevas, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vytautas Magnus University and current Visiting Scholar in the Baltic Studies Program at Yale University.
After playing death in film, your own death remains an impossible mystery — a role that has been unwritten, and has yet to be performed. This is a thought that orbits three different generations of actors — movie and theater legend Juozas (79), middle-generation Rasa (45) and Dainius (47), and the youngest actor and singer, Lukas (28). The eldest, Juozas, has repeatedly played characters who are on the verge of death in cinema and theater, but as he increasingly feels the burden of his age, he now prefers to talk about life in the language of photography, art and music. Through incredible coincidence, married couple Rasa and Dainius have both played roles staging their death in the legendary pose of Jean-Paul Marat, as painted in Jacques Louis David’s painting The Death of Marat; meanwhile, Rasa is immersed in yoga training in order to devote herself to the fullness of life, where Dainius is preoccupied by memories of his dead mother and his steadily weakening father.
In addition to acting in theater and cinema, the youngest Lukas, also sings in a band that has been recognized as “the most violent in the country.” Having recently played the role of Orpheus while divorcing his partner in “real” life, the worlds of his art have become areas where he can scream out his pain.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Nerijus Milerius was born in Vilnius in 1971, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vilnius University, Lithuania, where he teaches film philosophy, religious cinema, cultural studies and aesthetics. He is the editor and co-author of Film And Philosophy (2013) and author of Apocalypse In Cinema: The Philosophical Presuppositions (2013) and Viewing The Viewer: Cinema And Violence (2018). He is co-director of the documentary Exemplary Behaviour (winner of DOK Leipzig in 2019) and co-author of the script of Isaac (directed by Jurgis Matulevicius, 2019).