Time to get serious about blogging again--summer vacation (give or take that section of COMM 130), like baseball's Opening Day, is a time when we're allowed to think that anything is possible.
Like, for instance, getting (back) into the habit of regular blogging. Is 3x/wk really too much to ask?! Don't answer that one--at least not for another couple of months. Let's see where it goes...
Two weeks from now I have a conference presentation on post-accession-era Baltic film industries in Kaunas, so along with the class and the home-front (weeds! boxes! filing!), I'm looking to craft something presentable at the Baltic Studies conference....
I named my talk "From Despair to Where?" making a nod to the Manic Street Preachers (who I first got into while teaching in LT in the 1990s) while trying to put my finger on this transitional moment immediately after EU accession. When I came up this title last fall, I thought I was placing the present moment in the "where," locating "despair" as the period of re-independence / reemergent capitalism (1990-2004) that had been less than completely kind for the local film industries. However, with the global recession in full swing, I realize that the real moment of despair (industrial or otherwise) is in fact right now. So the question is how Baltic film has managed to reposition itself within EU structures, and how it's positioned to weather this recession...
In the meantime, I'm trying to watch all the Lithuanian films we're managed to stockpile before making another run. This weekend, for instance, I screened Paskutiniai Brėmeno muzikantai (Bremenas' Greatest Musicians, 2005), which for anything reminded me most of the hip-hop parody Fear of a Black Hat. Here, for instance, is the band having a go at what I'm 99% sure is a Boney M parody:
Several of the actors were involved with the LT staging of Jesus Christ Superstar back in the 1980s, and offer up a loving look at chasing Soviet-era musical fame (click here for a Wikipedia overview of Lithuanian rock). An overwrought love hexagon drags things down a bit, but there are enough good bits to recommend interested parties to seek it out--available, among other places, at BalticShop.
