The Drift along a Traumatic Past in the Cinematic Worlds of Šarūnas Bartas
The Drift along a Traumatic Past in the Cinematic Worlds of Šarūnas Bartas

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the reflections of a recent past and formations of post-1990s subjectivities in the films of the Lithuanian film-maker Šarūnas Bartas, namely Three Days (1991), The Corridor (1995), Few of Us (1996), Seven Invisible Men (2005) and Eastern Drift (2010), and presents an analysis of the interrelation of aural and visual layers in Bartas’s films, which fall under the discourse of trauma culture (Hal Foster) and de-territorialisation (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari). All the films tackle the relationship between the past and the present, local and transcultural, stillness and mobility, individual and communal in a sustained and complex way. Therefore, Bartas’s films reflect geopolitical and aesthetic perspectives. Bartas’s protagonists are nomads glimpsed through the Deleuzian crystalline image. They trek from one place or community to another in quest of lost belonging, freedom or adventure. Their national or cultural identity is not clearly articulated. However, they can be recognised as Eastern Europeans whose land has always been a corridor for different nations and a temporary home or place of freedom. They are like Vilém Flusser’s digital apparitions operating in Deleuzian any-space-whatevers. The nation’s land, represented by the archetypical images of a bridge, a corridor, a harbour and a home, signifies a period of historical transformations and mental transitions in society.

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