A musician on his way to meet a fellow fiddler, encounters two girls and is taken aback by their talks about afterlife. The musicians walk towards a village observing events, unable to discern phantasy from reality. Later, both men attend a funeral, where archaic rituals intertwine with the practice of marrying a dead girl to an ‘afterlife groom’.
EN
“Magic, images, appearances – who believes who? Who sees what? Is film illusion? If so, why not take the paradox further? Perspective? Narkevicius cheerfully inverts it, playing with the improbable scales of the characters moving through the landscape, thwarting the effects usually sought from 3D. The crossover of enchantment techniques is used to create a poetics and politics of the image. Twittering Soul’s imagery-fuelled retelling of folk tales blends pre-modern thought and practice with technologies past and present in a way that goes against the mainstream. Free of nostalgia, in a marvellous tone, this fable about belief challenges modernity using modernity itself and its own tools, whilst continuing to make use of what it thinks it’s shrugged off.”
Nicolas Feodoroff1
“Set in rural Lithuania at the end of the 19th century, Twittering Soul uses stereoscopic 3D to immerse the viewer in a remote, seldom seen corner of Europe – with many ravishing images of running water bulging out of the screen, as if to swallow the viewer – at a time when modernity and its upheavals are waiting in the wings. There is talk of witches flying over Kiev and looming disaster, a woman suffers an incurable affliction, a man’s soul leaves his mouth as a bird in the moment of his death, and a number of songs invoking the natural world are sung, although these plot points and scenes are more about capturing a mood than establishing a coherent narrative. Ultimately, how much you enjoy Twittering Soul depends on the extent to which you’re willing to go with its sometimes soporific flow. The film certainly offers ample time and space to consider the parallels with today: the first few tremors of cataclysmic change are already reverberating through our world.”
James Lattimer2
Offscreen: Your film struck me with its innovative stereoscopic design. Instead of objects cheaply flying in the face of the viewer, you seemed to use stereoscopy to open up your artistic canvas with compositional depth. With the layered compositional complexity of each frame, Twittering Soul feels as if the film was designed primarily for 3-D. Was this the case?
Deimantas Narkevičius: Oh, from the very beginning…from the very beginning. I did some short films in 3D, films that I showed mainly as installations in galleries, so I [was familiar with the technology] and I knew abouts its effects. From the very beginning, it was very clear that it had to be stereoscopy and only stereoscopy; there were never any other options. You're not going to show it in 2D, no, that would be another film.
Stereoscopic filming uses a rig and it’s very static in a way because you cannot fly with a drone or have any fancy camera movements. It's very simple. It's a filmmaking [style] from the 80s years ago: the camera can move up-down and left-right and that's it. No zoom [and no tracking]. The stereoscopic illusion adds another dimension and perception to how you see the film, how you arrange the scenes, and how you edit. But if shown in 2D, it would just look boring. What is this, a costume drama or whatever? Many would question why it is so slow too. Why is it so old-fashioned in a way? Stereoscopy is the only format for Twittering Soul.
Joshua Polanski in conversation with Deimantas Narkevičius3
- 1Nicolas Feodoroff, “Čiulbanti siela. Twittering Soul,” FIDMarseille.
- 2James Lattimer, “Tous les cinémas: FIDMarseille 2023,” Film Comment, 17 July 2023.
- 3Joshua Polanski, “PӦFF (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival ) Interview: Director Deimantas Narkevičius on Twittering Soul,” Offscreen 28, nr. 1 (2024).