The Festival of Songs

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The musical collage The Festival of Songs is based on home videos from the last decade of the 20th century, which capture everyday moments, namely – people playing various musical instruments and singing. This was a time when the beginning of Lithuanian independence coincided with the spread of the first widely available personal video cameras. Their owners mostly filmed their immediate living surroundings and family members. Today, these home videos provide an opportunity to look back at the beginnings of our current independent society, to understand what has remained and what has disappeared, what has become a lasting characteristic of society and what is merely a sign of the times. This work, full of nostalgia, irony, and warmth, is an ode to the inevitability of passing time. 

Director Karolis Kaupinis:

The 1990s marked the beginning of Lithuania’s independence and, at the same time, the beginning of our generation’s lives. It was a naïve time of those starting and learning to live, and accepting everything with open eyes and hearts. It was also a time when our parents gained freedom and the opportunity to capture that beginning themselves directly with their first personal video cameras. Home videos in occupied Lithuania were only available to a small privileged class. During the first decade of independence, the number of filming people increased significantly. This was not the approach of a television cameraman or a director trying to portray society, but simply the view of people recording their immediate living surroundings and everyday life. Today, when we have reached the age of our parents at that time, these recordings provide an excellent opportunity to look at the beginnings and origins of the present us, to understand what describes our character as a society and what was merely a sign of that particular time. Many things during that time were accompanied by music and song (an observation that emerged after reviewing the material). Hence, an idea arose that the most appropriate way to interpret this material was through music. 

 Reviews

It seems that the creators of The Festival of Songs relied mostly on nostalgia and sentiment rather than humour, as the content is primarily aimed at the now-grown-up children of the 1990s. The musical dramaturgy here often remains in the background – sometimes barely noticeable, like a watercolour wash, echoing the images on screen or extending them. The director cedes dominance to the visual medium, and it is precisely this medium that dictates the “drama” here. (Rima Jūraitė, menufaktura.lt)

In The Festival of Songs, the filmmakers’ perspective feels nostalgic rather than ironic, though there is no shortage of moments that naturally provoke laughter. However, these moments are not tied to a perspective imposed by the creators, but rather to the “rituals” of everyday life captured in the footage that have become the collective memory of an entire generation, albeit one that has drifted far from the present day. (Rasa Murauskaitė-Juškienė, 7 meno dienos)

It is a memory of the identical dinnerware sets or the clocks hanging on the walls found in every home, of the virtually indistinguishable concepts for parties and the nearly uniform variations of greetings found further away from the big cities. The Festival of Songs is an undiluted extract of the last decade of the 20th century. (Ugnė Kačkauskaitė, menufaktura.lt)

In The Festival of Songs Karolis Kaupinis manages to evoke not only shared experiences and glimpses of the time, but also a sense of presence “here and now,” when the media was merely a tool slightly entertaining the experience of everyday life and helping to preserve memory, rather than an attribute that we greedily devour every day and are immersed in. (Laura Šimkutė, 7 meno dienos)