Vladislav starewicz film program with live accompaniment

FILMS WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY: Pavel Pavlosyuk – a pianist, composer, and professional silent film accompanist from Ukraine.

The program is presented by the Film Culture Association and the early film festival First Wave; the program is funded by AVAKA and Kaunas City Municipality.

𝐀𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞; 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐮𝐯𝐚 𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭.

𓆣 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐕𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐕 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐈𝐂𝐙

Born into a Polish family in Moscow, Vladislav Starewicz grew up with relatives in Kaunas after his mother's death, where he became interested in photography and began his first film experiments. With a camera entrusted to him by the Kaunas Museum, he filmed his first documentary, "Over the Nemunas." In 1910, Starewicz created the first puppet animation film in world cinema history, "The Battle of the Stag Beetles," which, unfortunately, did not survive; however, "The Beautiful Lukanida," filmed in Kaunas that same year, brought him international fame. Since then, his films have been shown all over the world, and his work has inspired directors well-known to us, such as Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, and Walt Disney.

The emergence of this new type of cinema was partly due to the fact that Starewicz was particularly interested in entomology. He collected insects and tried to film scenes from their lives, but the film lamps of the time were too hot, and his "actors" simply "cooked" before they could finish their roles. Therefore, Starewicz began creating realistic insect models and animating them. This led to his entomological films "The Life of Dragonflies," "Beetle-Scarab," and later the animated "The Battle of the Stag Beetles" and "The Beautiful Lukanida," for which Starewicz was dubbed the "insect trainer," because his incomprehensible technique made people believe that trained insects were actually acting in the films.

His experiments with cinematic expression quickly transcended the boundaries of the insect world, and his name was supplemented with epithets such as "film alchemist," "film inventor," and others. Starewicz constantly sought new possibilities for cinematic expression: he experimented with film exposure, color, editing, and optical effects. Later, he began creating complex puppets capable of precise movements and facial expressions, and he considered himself not an animator, but a master of marionettes. In Moscow, where he lived and worked in 1912, Starewicz created not only animated films but also live-action films. After the 1917 revolution, he fled with his family to France and established his own studio near Paris, where the entire family worked on the films – his wife Anna and daughters Irene and Jeanne.

One of his most significant works is "The Tale of the Fox" (1937), based on the motifs of Goethe's work – the first feature-length animated film in the world, released a few months before Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Disney highly valued Starewicz's talent and his creative progress. Despite offers to work in the USA, Starewicz chose independence and continued to create in his studio with his family until the end of his life.

Today, a significant part of his work is lost or survives only in fragments. Starewicz's granddaughter Léona Béatrice Martin-Starewitch and her husband François Martin take care of the preservation, restoration, and dissemination of the surviving films and puppets.