Curonian Spit, a Moving Image

Presentation of the depiction of Neringa in films over the past 100 years

Friday, 13 May, 5.30 pm

Thomas Mann Museum

Skruzdynės str. 17

Nida

Film historian Audrius Dambrauskas presents a hundred years of film history on the Curonian Spit that includes almost 400 films, videos and other moving image materials. 

The presentation is a result of a year-long research Dambrauskas conducted for NAC looking into traces of how Neringa and the Curonian Spit have been depicted in moving images throughout the 20th century. The filmography forms a research tool to become part of the NAC library catalogue, to be consulted by anyone working on new film productions with the landscape of the Curonian Spit as a backdrop.     

The versatile landscape of the Curonian Spit has been used as a backdrop and a projection for many landscapes from far away, such as Siberia and Texas, among many others. In the 20th century, visitors who were speaking of the Curonian Spit’s landscape often described it as “the Sahara of the North”. Such a way of portraying it is still to be found quoted in many tourist guides of the recent past. With this research commission the intention was to look closer at how the colonial mindset of the time defined image-production and potentially influenced the lives of the permanent inhabitants of the peninsula, and what other images were projected onto its landscape. The filmography is accompanied by a concise overview of the history of film policy that has affected the Curonian Spit, also looking at cinematographic activities that have taken place in the region.  

This research has a truly broad scope, including feature films, documentaries, TV films, newsreels, amateur films, and art. The material is drawn from archives, databases and film libraries of both Lithuanian and foreign (especially German and Russian) collections. The filmography, as an incomplete list, provides access to study work produced in this region and observe the changing landscape and history of the Curonian Spit through the eyes of filmmakers, journalists, artists of different eras, backgrounds, and nationalities.

Audrius Dambrauskas is a historian and archivist currently working in the Lithuanian Archives of Literature and Arts.  His main scientific interests are film history and the popular culture of interwar Lithuania. In November 2020, he completed the joint Vilnius University and the Lithuanian Institute of History PhD programme with his doctoral dissertation Film Culture in Lithuania, 1926–1944: Between Entertainment and Ideology.  He is the author of several scientific articles on film history in Lithuania and more than a hundred popular articles on the history of Lithuanian film, science-fiction literature and popular culture.

The research commission is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, the presentation is organised with the kind support of the Neringa museums.