Let Me Dream

The aphotic zone is the deep and dark region encompassing most oceanic waters, into which light hardly penetrates. The Lithuanian artist and filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė has made a hypnotic film, somewhere between documentary and imaginary account, in which the oddness of the underwater world is confronted with the sonic landscape of a distant civilisation.

A modern fairytale about sound hunting. "Fishing frequencies" tells the story of Audrius Simkunas, a field recording artist and a musician, who lives in a small town of Lithuania, Utena, where he extensively records his surroundings for over 20 years. He collects all kinds of sounds - from bats, swamp noises, underwater creatures to industrial sounds - empty abandoned buildings, city noises, electric circuit sounds, etc. Dressed as a modern wizard, he goes with his devices into the wild and dives into pagan mythology - looking for those primal sounds there.

June 2022 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of historian and public figure Jerzy Orda, one of the most prominent personalities of 20th-century Vilnius. Orda's life, full of dramatic twists and turns, gives filmmakers an opportunity to reflect on the limits of human freedom under totalitarianism.

Data is not an abstract concept. It is an object on Earth. As the limitations of data retention in normal environments become more apparent, given the exponential growth of data created, entities that control cloud servers seek more and more novel means of storage. The deep oceanic environment is paradoxical. It offers temperature control, predictable patterns, and insulation from human error and the seasonal vicissitudes of climate above mean sea level. It is also a black box. Without close human contact, subject to unknown risks, ranging from marine fouling by invertebrate lifeforms and chemical reactions to unpredictable seismic events, new vulnerabilities emerge.

Lithuanian couple goes on a hiking trip in Northern Lapland, Finland. Disconnected from the rest of the world, they get to know much later that the war broke out in the rest of Europe so they are faced with a harsh choice - whether to come back to the burning hometown of Vilnius or try to stay longer and adapt to live in an open wilderness in Lapland?