by Levan Tskhovrebadze, during the Moving Images – Open Borders (MIOB) 3rd LAB of Cultural, Creative and Festival Journalism.
The Pot-au-feu (2023) in Vilnius and The Mammoth Hunt (2023) in Kaunas opened the 21st edition of the European Film Forum Scanorama. Promising a diverse selection of films that transcend borders and genres, this eleven-day annual celebration of cinema across four Lithuanian cities – Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, and Šiauliai (with additional screenings in Alytus and Visaginas) – made Scanorama a remarkable event.
Emphasizing the connection of Nordic and Baltic cultures, Scanorama (a contraction of "Scandinavian Panorama") strategically expands the pan-European context. The festival actively honors film history and its future by blending retrospectives with contemporary films – from Lars von Trier's Medea (1988) to Quentin Dupieux's Yannick (2023) to The Rite (1969) by Ingmar Bergman.
Collaborating with six film festivals in Europe dedicated to the continent's cinema, in 2017 Scanorama co-founded the "Moving Images – Open Borders" (MIOB) network. The network promotes diverse artistic facets, regional characteristics, and socio-political narratives of European cinema.
Both of the opening films featured wide-ranging artistic elements and socio-political accounts of European culture. The Mammoth Hunt by Aistė Stonytė searches for the mysteriously lost film recording, and the stories around it, of a play by renowned Lithuanian theatre director Jonas Jurašas. Tran Anh Hung in The Pot-au-feu meanwhile attempts to convey the passions of fictional 19th-century gourmet Dodin Bouffant on screen.
Scanorama in Vilnius opened with a lot of food served at a reception in the multiplex Forum Cinemas Vingis, followed by Tran's gastronomical treat. Adapting Marcel Rouff's 1920 novel The Passionate Epicure, the director engages the audience in a flavorful experience. Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) is living in culinary paradise, tasting, inventing and reinventing toothsome meals with the cook Eugenie (Juliette Binoche) – with whom he happens to be in love.
Dodin Bouffant's admiration of Eugenie comes from her exceptional kitchen skills. He's in love with her food more than the woman herself, so the director attempts to convey that feeling to the audience exhibiting closeups of tempting delights. Besides this sensory aspect, The Pot-au-feu is an exquisite story about love and loss. The picture is as delectable as the dishes displayed, making it a feast for cinema and cuisine enthusiasts alike.
The Mammoth Hunt tells the story of Jurašas, whose play of the same title was banned from stages in the late 1960s by the Soviet authorities. The movie features numerous important Lithuanian artists – from directors to actors to cinematographers – and overall presents a petrifying but ultimately joyful celebration of artistic resistance. At the Kaunas opening, one could spot many honorable and renowned Lithuanian artists from both the cinema and theater fields – and even the country's esteemed former president and "father of the nation," the 91-year-old Vytautas Landsbergis.
