Robyn Candyce
From 1940-41 Lithuania became occupied by Soviet forces, and the country’s government allowed it by offering no opposition. They soon realized allowing the Soviet invasion to occur was a mistake, as they had no choice but to observe the negative effects that Communism had on the Lithuanian people. In 1944, the Soviets invaded Lithuania a second time, but this time the country fought back. About 30,000 young men and women took to arms, forming a guerrilla movement referenced to often as Forest Brothers.
Directed by Vincas Sruoginis and Jonas Ohman, and produced by Mark Johnston, the award winning documentary “The Invisible Front” follows the story of this movement, and the heroic people who helped keep it going at any cost, even if it was death. Moviehole’s Robyn Candyce recently caught up with Vincas and Mark in New York for a cocktail and an interview.
How did you all meet up? How did this project get started, and can you tell me a little bit about your backgrounds in the film industry?
Vincas: In terms of my personal history, I’m of Lithuanian-American decent. I was born here in exile; my grandfather was a diplomat who couldn’t return to Lithuania, so the Lithuanian part was ingrained in my blood. That being said, I grew up in this lifestyle.
In terms of us meeting, I grew up in a very patriotic family because we were in exile. My sister is a famous writer and translator in Lithuania. She was at a writer’s conference and met Jonas (who is our other partner). He had translated the book that our film is based on “Forest Brothers” or “Partisans” into Swedish, and it was a big book in Sweden, and they were chatting, and ironically they got to be friends. Jonas was saying [to my sister] that we wanted to make a film about [the book]. I was here working on TV commercials. I started as an editor, at an editorial studio. So you know, my sister told Jonas “I have a brother that can do film, you guys should connect,” and he and I started researching, and just kind of talking about ideas.
Two years later my wife, who works in advertising as well, met Mark at an advertising party, and she connected Mark and I. Even though I fought it, and fought it, and fought it we finally met up and hit it off. I don’t know if you would call it kismet, but all of it was coming together and none of it was planned. It all just happened – which is what helped us make the film – every step of the way things just worked out for us. There was a lot of struggle, but it just worked out for us.
Mark: For me, I worked for a company for nine years in L.A – advertising firm – and I went to school for film. I’d always wanted to move into film, but being at that company gave me an opportunity every summer to take a month off and I’d go backpacking. So [a friend and I] decided to do a travelling trip through the Baltics. We went through Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania –at the end – and to me the trip to [the Baltics] was interesting because, I don’t know about you, but at the time I was in high school the history books said U.S.S.R.
My interpretation of what the Soviet Union was, [had been] the United States of America – a bunch of states that were all just kind of making up the U.S.S.R. I didn’t know that the U.S.S.R. had occupied all these states after World War II. I just didn’t know it, and it wasn’t in the history books. So, when I got there [I] started going to the museums [and I learned that Lithuania] was an occupation center of resistance and genocide; I didn’t know all these people were shipped to Siberia. I had no idea there was this negative aspect, I mean we all knew it was the Cold War. I just didn’t know that these individual states were a Stalinist occupation, the Red Army. They are kind of this evil empire. That was a big discovery [for me].
I got back to The States and I thought that it was just such as amazing story; learning that this resistance happened, which to me the idea of a youth movement taking over and actually fighting and being for real, was impressive to me.
I moved to New York two years later [and] quit my job. The boss I work for now had this great quote, “If you open yourself up to the universe it’ll take you in”. Sure enough I moved to New York and what I always wanted to do was some film, and within two weeks in I met Vincas’ wife, and she introduced us the next week. A week later Vincas introduced me to Jonas, and like a week or two after that we signed an agreement to make the film, six years ago. So it’s been a long road, but I think that commitment of not giving up to tell our first story was an important thing. I could never do it again.
Now there are different types of communism, or different ways of interpreting communistic theory. So to clarify for the potential audience members reading this, tell me more about Stalinism.
Mark: Look, what I’ve learned about Stalinism, or communism in general, is that you have a few people in power and they want to do a greater good, but inherent in the human psyche is greed and taking care of who is number one. The patriotism of that central core is manipulation and propaganda. I don’t think it’s a very free thinking part, and I think what Stalin did is he manipulated, at Yalta, a very tired Roosevelt and Churchill. He said one thing, and then lied. I think that communism at that time was a bunch of liars, not to say anything against the United States or anyone at the time, I think it was all a bunch of liars.
Vincas: The Core message about the film in general is that this was a forced occupation. The way that history has spoken about it and talks about it these days is as a liberation, and that’s just not true. This was a forced occupation of many nations, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Chechnya, etc…let’s not forget that Hitler and Stalin were allies in the beginning of the war they just betrayed each other. That’s why Soviet Union invaded in 1941 the Baltics and then Hitler came and pushed them out, and then they came back with a vengeance.
That’s when the partisan movement that we’re talking about (there are a lot of different partisan movements, it’s a very loose term), but the partisan movement that we speak about started with that second Soviet occupation. This was towards the end of the war, and this was after the Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians had already seen a majority of their population deported to Siberia. They had already seen the Nazis come in and kill off the Jewish population – 90 percent of Lithuanian Jews were killed during the Nazis occupation. So these [partisans] were the young people who were left at the time. They were 16 to 20 years old and they took up arms because they didn’t want any more of this on their soil. Unfortunately, they lost in the short term. In the long term they influenced the 1990 independence movement.
You’re asking about different types of communism; Stalinism at its core was very aggressive, violent and evil to start with, and it affected many countries. Basically, the Soviets deported anyone they considered to be enemies of the people. Whereas communism in Poland was different, communism in Hungary was different, communism in China right now is different, and so it’s a very clear distinction. Stalinism was very violent and very aggressive, and what these people were fighting against was butchery, and the appropriation of their land, and the redistribution of the wealth. People were just out and out deported, executed and ran away.
Paul Goble was in the film, and he kind of seemed like he was full of it. Listening to him, and reading his body language, and hearing what he had to say [the way he had to say it], he just seemed full of it. Was he?
Mark: It’s funny that you mention that. You’re not the only person to have said that.
Vincas: You know that’s really receptive of you. There is this saying that if you look to your left you’re lying and there’s this moment in the film; I have a lot of respect for Paul Goble.
Mark: Paul Globe is like the most respected in the community of the Baltics, because he ran the Baltic Desk in 1991. As far as a person in the film that represents America at that time, there is no one from America that would know more, but could not be more political. He is Paul Goble. He ran the Baltic Desk. His agenda was 1991 and making that happen.
Vincas: Well from ’88 to ’94, the Lithuanian Independence Movement started in ’88. Well, to be earnest it really started in ’86, but started to pick up steam in ’88 and came to a head in 1991 and the Soviets didn’t withdraw until ’94. Now in the course of a 50 year occupation – we’re talking ’88-’94, in that six years – there was insane global change on a massive scale and he was there, at the doorstep of it all.
Mark: His whole career was the Baltics, and in ’91 he was the head of it. He might sound like he is full of sh*t, but he is very balanced in his position. I think what’s impressive is at the end he provides something we never knew about, Jonas never knew about – or drew the connection – and he provided that in the interview [in the film], which is the connection that the underground resistance in ’45 and ’55 provided the state of mind for the people in ’91. That fire never went out within the people and the culture.
Vincas: You can see it in his eyes, he got emotional. In the raw footage you can see he just was stopped. He himself got caught up in the moment, and the whole room got caught up in the moment, and he broke the ice a moment later because he realized that he dropped his guard as a government official. That was a very honest statement, and that’s kind of the thesis of the film. Went sent him a DVD of the footage and he never responded to us, [I think] because we revealed a weakness in the foreign policy of the United States recognizing that these guys were fighting and we never helped.
We showed this film to the U.S. military my last day, in Lithuania.
Vincas: 173rd airborne.
Mark: There were 200 people in the theatre, shipped in from a secret base in Lithuania to watch the movie and, they literally, they watched the credits, and they were answering and asking questions, but also just processing in their minds as soldiers, and leaders of the soldiers, [asking] what is America doing now?
Vincas: It was interesting to hear American Soldiers ask why America didn’t out and out help. We get that a lot from Lithuanian audiences, but it is jaw dropping to hear Americans ask that question today.
There is this quote in the film that Juozas Luksa “You must admit that happiness does not wait around for us, but is found only very rarely and under the most trying of circumstances. It is hidden and rarely shows itself. Perhaps, this is why for us earthy creatures happiness is so rare, because it is so rare and it occurs so seldom and it is so difficult to obtain”. This is also a love story, and you’re not telling just this communism and this comradery story, but a love story. From your observations and your experience with the research for this film, how does love influence hope and would Juozas Luksa’s mission have been successful without it?
Mark: The story is one-of-a-kind, never to be told again because it took six years. The beginning of the story was trying to find out about the resistance movement. What happened over the course of two years was that we found out this was a human story, and we decided Luksa should be the center.
Nijole, we always knew that she was his ex, but her family never knew her story until we showed the first screening of her story. She is 90 years old and she wants Luksa’s legacy to be told. It was a very touching subject for us to approach upon.
Vincas: In terms of a love story, it’s a different type of story than what we are used to now. It’s a time when writing letters was far more romantic and far more meaningful than it is now. It’s not like you just go to a bar and meet someone it was a long courtship.
Matt: Well I think it would be a lot more meaningful, because it is a lot more rare.
Vincas: It is a love story because they were torn between [their love for each other] and the love for their nation.
Mark: Think of it like this, you’re country is overrun with Ebola, do you flee your country or do you do you go [stay] because its you’re country even though you’re like F**k dude everyone here has Ebola.
Vincas: Nijole even went back after the occupation just to see for herself how bad it was, and her mother was like “What are you crazy? Get out of there”. She took the last boat out of Lithuania.
So speaking of “the infected,” The Smogikai, what were they?
Mark: So, who they were; they were partisans that were turned by Soviets to hunt down their friends. It was the most evil decision you could ever make because you are like a deer hunting an animal in the forest underground, hiding out and moving from bunker to bunker. You are using the information that you know about the villages of people you know, maybe pretending still to be a Partisan, but with the knowledge that you are hunting your friends.
But were they given a choice?
Vincas: They were not given a choice.
Mark: They were. They were given two options, die or your family going to die. What they would do is blow themselves up because they didn’t want to give themselves up.
Vincas: Right, they knew it was the best way to protect themselves and their friends.
Mark: And not even just kill themselves, but they would put a grenade to their face and blow their face up because they knew that…what they would do is line people up in the streets of their village and when one of them started crying in front of everybody they would just pull them out and then they would use them like a web to get everyone else.
So “Forest Brothers” and this youth movement where it was basically kid, and girls, picking up weapons; that would have never happened in America – at that time – or anywhere else.
Vincas: Well it was six percent of the population, and the key is that they saw what happened to the generation ahead of them. They saw the mass deportations, the executions, etc…and they said “You know what, not us. We’re not having it”. Also remember that Lithuania was a rural country, it was a farming and hunting country. It was different; it wasn’t like this big metropolitan country. It wasn’t like people were comfy, sitting in their apartments and smoking cigarettes [place]. These were hunters, workers, they were burley people. They weren’t having it.
Mark: Paul Goble, during our interview in D.C. was saying the reason that Latvia and Estonia got so taken over was that their road structure was so developed that [the invaders] just rolled right in. Lithuania was this dirt road country. They were pretty rural so it was very hard to find any capitol, or anything.
This movie won an award –an audience award – which is cooler because there’s no jury, there’s nobody [else but the audience] to judge it.
Vincas: Essentially it’s the best of festival award. Basically everyone who saw the film, they went nuts over it in Lithuania. It wasn’t easy. It’s not like we just came in and were like “Hey we’re the best film here”. There was a lot of competition, like the number two film I saw it and I was like “Oh my God,” it was like “Amelie”, it was like a really good film. I watched it, and I was like wow, we beat this movie.
What is festival is the award from?
Vincas: Kino pavasaris which is the Vilnius International Film Festival. This year is going to be their 20th anniversary. So it has been around for 20 years. It’s a huge European festival. At one point I was in a van getting driven to a screening with a Serbian director, a Hungarian director, and an Italian film representative. It was like this international community in one van. I was just like wow, this is amazing, this political conversation that we’re having. They are close with a lot of other big European festivals. I think that it’s an up-and-coming festival.
Mark: I submitted us to the Vilnius festival on a whim, not thinking we were going to get in. We had submitted to so many festivals, so I submitted – didn’t tell anyone I submitted – and then I was like hey guys, we got in. We got early admission, and they [flew us out there]. They were treating us with such respect that we weren’t used to and we all went out there. Who we met by being in that circle…like every main Eastern European market was there in big presence and so that’s what made it-
Vincas: It had 100,000 visitors they told me.
Mark: They took over the whole town. There were more people visiting than living there at the time.
Vincas: This is the real deal. I’m actually quite proud that we won. It was a huge accomplishment.
Mark: We were at like this huge warehouse party and that’s where they announced that we won.
Vincas: There is a huge Lithuanian market to make films their now. It’s really growing, they are really investing, they’re giving tax incentives. I’ve shot some films there, I’ve worked with some “A” list crews in Lithuania, I mean they are really growing.
Was it hard to get people to talk to you for the interviews that you did, because [these people] they were so candid?
Vincas: Well, that’s a whole long story. I mean a lot of that generation wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone about it for decades because of Soviet oppression. Then by the time the oppression went away there was independence, and the people were like how do we create an economy, how do we form a government? So they kind of forgot and it got left aside. These were people that were very willing to talk, but no one was talking to them.
Mark: Let’s give Jonas credit.
You’re not a bunch of outsiders making a film for people to watch, you are connected to these people.
Vincas: Well that’s the thing for me; watching the footage of the interviews at two ‘o’ clock in the morning, at my editing studio, I would just find myself like [crying] my eyes out. There are people in the film who look like family members of mine. There are people in the film who remind me of my dad. It bugged me out; these people are talking about being tortured, being imprisoned, being oppressed and all this stuff. I just like literally night after night just cried my eyes out.
I literally thought, okay I’ll make a film, for one year. I’ll be in and out, and get on with my life, but it altered me as a person, it altered me as a Lithuanian. It altered me as an American. It altered me on all levels, and that’s something I was not expecting. Really just the emotional connection that I had with these people and that I had with this film was because this was my life. I was born in exile. This is my life. This is the definition of my life, and I gave no thought to it whatsoever. I thought yeah let’s get together and make a movie, it’s all good, but it changed me. I wasn’t expecting that.
The film will open in New York on Friday Novemeber 7th2014, in Chicago on November 14th and in Los Angeles on November 21st. For more information about the film visit http://theinvisiblefront.com/new/.
