Henrikas Šablevičius

Four different stories about young kids' destinies in different time periods in Lithuania.

Harlequin wanders through the night streets of old Vilnius, searching for friendship and human warmth.

A film about circus veterans. The main characters of the film are Barnabas, a power juggler, Jonas Ramanauskas, a folk artist of the LSSR, and Jadvyga Stankutė-Ramanauskienė, an acrobat. Both are long retired, but even in their cosy homes, their memories of the circus do not leave them, so the film recalls the interesting and sad history of Lithuanian circus.

Based on the novel of the same name by Raimondas Kašauskas, about a strange man who is restless, who wants to live differently from everyone else, to play life.

A film about Stasys Brundza, the winner of the Tour d'Europe, who managed to break into the wide world behind the Iron Curtain through sport.

About the folklore ensemble of elderly village singers.

A surrealist etude that doesn’t have a clear narrative, and is courageous in its form, unusual in the context of Lithuanian cinema at the time.

Lithuanian documentary about bicycles.

When Henrikas Šablevičius started filming Lithuanian “oddballs” – a professor, a fortune teller, racers, and many others who fell short of the concept of the “model citizen” – he invented a bizarre new genre of documentary biopic. Characteristic of these portraits is a sense of mocking irony directed not at their subjects (on the contrary, the filmmaker’s affection for them is palpable) but at the “Soviet hero” genre. The subject of this film is Apolinaras, a kindhearted policeman who even outwardly looks very unlike the ideological “guardian of morals.”.

This film details the dismantling of the old railway Siaurukas in Lithuania and the construction of its new modern replacement. The old railway and the new railway become the symbol of the clash between the archaic rural Lithuania and Soviet industrialization. The film was often considered as an expression of the archetypes of Lithuanian character.

A film about Jonas Kaušpadas, a teacher at the Eight-year-old school of the Viru district of Estonia, who came to Estonia to get acquainted with Estonian culture, bring Lithuanian and Estonian people closer together.

The film’s protagonist, P. Pūras, has dedicated his life to working diligently at the Žiežmariai clinic. He is not a doctor, yet the institution’s daily operations would be unimaginable without him—he is a jack-of-all-trades: driver, electrician, plumber. He performs every task willingly and joyfully, never engaging in conflict with others or himself, never questioning whether helping someone will bring him any benefit. He simply works, and that brings him satisfaction. Šablevičius portrays a man who maintains his optimism and inner clarity in any situation.

A film about the Skuodas motoball team "Bartuva".

A story about the poet Vytautas Mačernis (1921-1944)

Original folk craftsmen-sculptors who are united by the traditional, wood carving craft that came from centuries old.

Glastnost and Lithuania’s eventual independence from the USSR open up the possibility of examining previously banned subjects: death, postwar resistance and – as in We Were at Our Own Field – the damage done by the Soviet occupation and the simple longing for home.

Documentary film showing authentic Lithuanian traditions & rituals during major seasonal festivals: Winter solstice, Mardi Gras, Easter, Midsummer.

The director shows us an unofficial Lithuania, an indestructible village, old traditions and impressive faces. In the films of Shablevičius, the village, the land, the lonely tree standing outside are often filmed in winter, when everything gets the shade of a fairy tale and a miracle, and a rider on the road brings an unexpected message. The old mythical rural worldview seems to come alive in the eyes of the audience.

A short movie about a summer adventures of a boy and his dog illustrated with a lot of documentary scenes about a life of a children in Lithuania during sixties.