Twittering Soul

A deeply unsettling, hypnotic, and uncanny work of historical imagination, Twittering Soul was conceived for – and only for – 3D projection, a medium of which it makes truly singular and innovative use. 

“Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevičius’s alluring period piece Twittering Soul is set in the late 1800s, yet it is haunted by the specter of the 20th century. It’s the dawn of automobiles, human aviation, psychoanalysis and of course, cinema. Indifferent to, but not ignorant of, these historical upheavals, a small wooded village in southern Lithuania prepares for doomsday. Two women discuss afterlife, an itinerant musician witnesses strange happenings on his journey, tales are told of stones that grow in size and float in the air, a band of faeries weave busily away in a cottage, a feudal lord pores over an optical contraption as his daughter is warned about the witches that haunt a nearby tree. The nature of these events remains mysterious, the connection between them tenuous. Like Breughel’s Netherlandish Proverbs, the film weaves them into a sumptuous, mystical rural tapestry embodying a distinct, pre-modern conception of life and beyond. Narkevičius draws his material liberally from Lithuanian folk song, superstitions, sayings, prayers and games, concocting a work that hovers between reality, fantasy, dreams and visions. Presented in stereoscopic 3D and shot with a painterly attention to light, Twittering Soul gazes at once into the past and the future.” 

–Srikanth Srinivasan, INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM 

“Narkevičius cheerfully inverts [perspective], playing with the improbable scales of the characters moving through the landscape, thwarting the effects usually sought from 3D. The crossover of enchantment techniques is used to create a poetics and politics of the image. Twittering Soul’s imagery-fueled retelling of folk tales blends pre-modern thought and practice with technologies past and present in a way that goes against the mainstream. Free of nostalgia, in a marvelous tone, this fable about belief challenges modernity using modernity itself and its own tools, whilst continuing to make use of what it thinks it’s shrugged off.” 

–Nicolas Feodoroff, FIDMARSEILLE