In memory of the actor Donatas Banionis, the Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival will screen one of his most famous films, “Nobody Wanted to Die”.
The film, made in 1966 and restored in 2016, will be screened on the occasion of the actor’s hundredth birthday.
Born on April 28 in Kaunas, Donatas Banionis (1924-2014) is known to sci-fi fans all over the world from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Solaris”, which HÕFF showed three years ago, when Stanislaw Lem’s 100th birthday was celebrated.
“No one wanted to die” takes place in 1947 in a Lithuanian village. The forest brothers kill the fifth chairman of the village council. The sons of their latest victim swear bloody revenge.
In the shadow of the genre canons of the Soviet western or western, the story unfolds regarding ordinary people who are caught between two fires and have to choose whose side they are on.
Banionis plays the former forester Vaitkus, who becomes the new chairman of the village council – this is his best-known film role, which also brought the Lithuanian a national award of the USSR together with director Vytautas Žalakevičius, cameraman Jonas Gricius and co-actor Bruno Oja.
Banionis also won the best actor award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
The film’s popularity was also shown by the fact that the readers of the magazine Sovetski Ekran, with a circulation of 2.6 million, overwhelmingly chose it as the best film of 1966.
In Lithuania, the attitude towards the film is still divided: some consider it the best domestic film of all time, others consider it Soviet propaganda and falsification of history.
Banionis himself appreciated it. “This is a film regarding a person who happened to live in such a time. And he was killed. Why? For what? Because two opposing sides were at war. But he didn’t want to be with one or the other. He wanted to be human. He was killed for that. I played with all my heart in this film. In fact, it was not necessary to play there – it was necessary to be there. I knew such people well and became one of them myself,” he told the Lithuanian press in 2010.
From his long list of films – almost 80 – he singled out a few in retrospect. Apart from Nobody Wanted to Die and Solarist, they included, for example, Savva Kuliš’s Silent Season, Konrad Wolf’s Goya and Grigory Kozintsev’s King Lear.
“I’m a bad actor. But I came across good directors. And if it didn’t happen, nothing good came of it,” he said in an interview.
Director Grigori Kozintsev has spoken regarding the Banionis phenomenon as follows: “There are many great actors who are able to recreate the character in all accuracy and complexity. They are great, but they remain only champions. And there are uniquely individual people who, even when conveying the author’s idea very precisely, add something special that permeates the artist’s entire creation. In Banionis, we are charmed by both his high level of acting skills and a certain characteristic characteristic of him, which shines on all the works in which he participates.”
Estonian actors have played together with Jüri Järvet, Bruno Oja, Leonhard Merzini and Eve Kivi many times in Banion.
The HÕFF special session on April 26 will be introduced by writer Olev Remsu.
The Haapsalu horror and fantasy film festival will take place on 26-28 until April. The festival opens with the premiere of Sander Maran’s film “Chainsaws sang”. Tickets for the opening ceremony and the film, as well as festival passes, are on sale at a discounted price until March 31. Ticket sales will open on April 7.
2024-03-07 13:10:32
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