WHEN I WAS A PARTISAN

  WHEN I WAS A PARTISAN (KAI AŠ BUVAU PARTIZANAS)
  The dreamlike film about the period after the World War II is an attempt to resurrect the relatively recent painful past of Lithuania – the partisan war against the Soviet occupation – and to look at the events of the heroic and tragic struggle from an unconventional psychoanalytic point of view. The main character of the film is a theatre actor (portrayed by Gediminas Storpirštis) playing a part of a partisan leader. During the play he is suddenly overwhelmed by visions that take him to historical past. The actor becomes a little boy cast in the whirlpool of tragic post-war events. The visions keep coming back and the make-up lady (Rūta Staliliūnaitė) persuades the actor to seek help with the Old Man (Algimantas Masiulis). The actor travels to an old mill to meet the Old Man – and his own past.
  The main message and the feeling of the film, written and directed by Vytautas V. Landsbergis, can be expressed through the words of the famous Swiss psychoanalyst Karl Jung from his contemplations about the meaning of our short human life in the presence of death and eternity: “I can imagine that I might have already lived in previous ages and faced issues that I couldn‘t solve at that time. Thus, I had to be born again because I hadn’t fulfilled the task I was commissioned to” (from Memories, Dreams, Reflections).