Pabaltys
Installation / 20 min. Animation, 2018
It all started with a rediscovery of a 16mm family film, made by our dad in the mid seventies.
A bit grainy, casually put together and yet magical episodes of our childhood, were filmed in a tiny Lithuanian village - Pabaltys.
Every summer we traveled there with our grandparents from Leningrad. Hidden in the pine forests and surrounded by crystal-clear lakes, Pabaltys was our very first “laboratory”, a place where we started to notice and explore the world, to draw and to dream...
It has been almost 30 years since we have been there... A lot has happened: Lithuania became an independent country, both Leningrad and the Soviet Union are history now. We moved to the United States to study art, traveled many roads, finally settling in Berlin.
And yet a thought about Pabaltys kept coming back. Does it still exist?
Could it be possible to find the forest path that leads to the village of our childhood?
A journey from Berlin to Pabaltys, in which memories and new impressions meet, captured in more than 3000 animated drawings and watercolours, became the subject of our story.
This film is our first animation. It is dedicated to our late dad.
The project consists of a large series of drawings, phenakistoscopes (early animation devices) and a wall size projection of a film Pabaltys.