QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
Karolis Kaupinis’s second feature film, Hunger Strike Breakfast, takes a cinéma vérité approach and adds a dose of absurdism to the crucial Lithuanian historical events of January 1991. The Soviet Armed Forces invaded the southernmost Baltic country not long after its declaration of independence in a violent grab of straws by Mikhail Gorbachev to reassert Soviet domination over the country. The invasion was largely thwarted by civilian street protestors, though the Lithuanian Radio and Television headquarters was taken by the invading army. Hundreds lost their jobs. Kaupinis’s film, his second to realize an episode of his homeland’s history, shows the passionate though meek protest raised by a few of the now jobless media figures.
Television announcer and broadcaster Daiva, played sombrely and thoughtfully by 45-year-old Ineta Stasiulytė, leads the small protest and encampment at the base of the headquarters. Her boss, an older television director Mykolas (Arvydas Dapšys, with 65 years of age), is fraught with worry about Soviet backlash should the invaders reassert power fully. Initially, they annoy struggling father and actor Sigis (Paulius Pinigis, the youngest of three, aged 37), who is worried they will wake his child, with their ruckus of sound, but he eventually joins their cause. They struggle to earn the attention of many more people on either side of the cause, so Sigis, recalling advice from an American book, proposes a hunger strike – a strike that failed to ever fully convince this viewer of actual physical hunger.
The ages of the three actors (and their respective characters) codify their various responses. It’s the middle-aged Daiva who is most eager for change: she’s old enough to be tired of the status quo and young enough to dream of change. Mykolas is too old to believe that the changing is possible. He pessimistically assumes things could go back to how they’ve always been and any homegrown resistance would be firmly squashed. Sigis, as a young father trying to keep his head down and raise a family, has more on his mind than political revolution.
The awkwardness of the lonely protests gets uncomfortable. Is it supposed to be funny? It is tough to ever be fully sure. The directness of the cinéma vérité-style cinematography, in this way, becomes like a drunk friend whose usual directness morphs into rudeness. The micro-focus on these three protestors also makes it seem as if most civilians stopped caring about the occupation of the Radio and Television headquarters, which is unbelievable to say the least.
The United States lurks in the background. Jazz music is the most consistent musical cue, though the film spends most of its runtime without tunes. A Hollywood movie plays in the background once. Even the idea for the hunger strike came to Sigis only through an American – seductive in itself at the time for many Lithuanians, to be sure, with the US being the heralded symbol of everything anti-USSR. It’s also indicative of the world to emerge out of the Cold War and the two sides that Lithuania would find itself between.
Times have changed since, particularly in the United States. This humble American writer watched Hunger Strike Breakfast while an increasingly authoritarian Donald Trump continued to erode the foundations of free media in a country that was once considered a role model. The contexts differ, for sure – but both are the results of last-ditch aspirations to maintain the empire. And both are dependent on the role of the media. The Republican Party’s attempts to strengthen its stranglehold on the media almost weekly, whether it’s pressuring networks to drop late-night comedians or giving right-wing media men an anti-competitive pass for monopolisation, remind us why the USSR went for the Vilnius TV Tower. One of the protesting chants rings: “a free television, a free Lithuania!”. Stories like Hunger Strike Breakfast are important for how they remind us of this.
Hunger Strike Breakfast just premiered in the Baltic Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
