Next to us
| 25 min. – Documentary – 25 min., black and white, DV CAM – 2005 , Studio „2000“ |
Screenplay : Algimantas Maceina
Cinematographer : Algimantas Mikutėnas
Editing director : Kęstutis Zauras
Producer : Kęstutis Petrulis
The film tells the reality of contemporary provincial villages where a knife stabbed in one’s drinking buddy, a blow with an axe on one’s competitor, beating one’s wife and children in a drunken state are an everyday reality. Their life interests no one, not even themselves, except the photographer Rimaldas Vikšraitis.
His photographs are inhabited by naked people, women lifting up their skirts, men shamelessly demonstrating their “pride” in littered rooms among filthy laundry, potato peelings and buckets of pigswill. Why do his works attract viewers, although the images are really drastic?
Hyperrealistic photographs by R. Vikšraitis have been shown in exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad since 1979. The photographer has been awarded prizes in the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium and USA. In childhood the artist fell ill with a serious disease, which disturbed his language and made him physically handicapped. Perhaps, we leave our country people in the quagmire of complete apathy and hopelessness?
