Filmmaker Tomas Vengris: "You achieve your goal through risks and mistakes"
Not only we, but also filmmakers, live in the unpredictable rhythm of time. On the last day before the start of the quarantine, I met with Tomás Vengris, a film director who was in Lithuania at the time. Despite the engaging conversation, it was not easy to distance myself from the knowledge that this meeting would be the last. The eve of the quarantine also meant that the whole culture, and thus the film industry, was on hold for an unknown time. Nevertheless, Tom and I talked about his future plans, his upcoming film, and as the conversation turned to his childhood, the first attempts at filmmaking were recalled, which eventually turned from improvised games into the most important activity of his life. In this interview, we talk about the journey towards his goal, full of discoveries, experiences and lessons.
At what stage are you currently living as a creator?
Lately I'm in a constant phase: I'm constantly developing ideas and projects for future films. I have a lot of ideas in my head that I might not realise. We received funding from the Lithuanian Film Centre. In the autumn, filming starts.
What is your upcoming film about?
"Five and a Half Love Stories in an Apartment in Vilnius" - that's its current title. The film will tell five unfortunate love stories that take place in an Airbnb apartment in Vilnius. Different personalities from different countries around the world, the same apartment, different circumstances and peripheries, and these unfortunate love stories are watched by an equally important character in the film - a cleaning lady who not only brings all these stories together, but also experiences her own love story.
Why do you think it was difficult to write the script?
I started studying anthology films, where the plots are made up of different stories that come together. One of my favourite films is Night on Earth by Jim Jarmusch.
I think it is very important to keep a balance, to have a strong and consistent theme, but at the same time it should not be repetitive, because the storyline can become easily predictable. With any film, not necessarily an anthology film, there has to be a process, a build-up and build-down of tension, and at the end of the film the viewer still realises that it has been a journey through different emotions and experiences.
In "Five and a Half Love Stories in an Apartment in Vilnius", different personalities meet: an Israeli couple, an Irish bachelor party, a Dutchman - characters of different ages. As I said before, when I started writing I thought it would be very simple, but in the end it ended up taking three years to write the script. After writing the initial version, I found a co-writer, an Israeli living in New York. An Israeli filmmaker friend of mine read the script and offered to meet her. She contributed to the second and third versions, and I finished the final version.
Can you tell us more about the work and the initial phase of the upcoming film?
Lately, I've been experiencing some surprises. Recently, I was casting Israeli actors on the Zoom platform. Among them was a well-known Israeli actress who is also doing international projects and appearing in Netflix series. At the beginning of the casting, I felt uncomfortable, as if she was not interested in being here.
However, the interview went really well, we talked, and finally at the end of the audition, she said she had something to show me, and unexpectedly pulled out her Lithuanian passport. This actress told me that her grandfather was shot in Kaunas Fort IX, and her dad was the only survivor of the family. He considers himself Lithuanian and does not understand why life has turned out in such a way that he cannot be in Lithuania, to which he feels a very strong connection.
Coincidentally or not, there is an Israeli couple in my upcoming film. The plot is about how the woman wants to find out what happened to her grandfather, while the man, whose roots do not go beyond Israel, is not interested in finding out her family history. This coincidence made it clear that the woman's last role was for her.
Don't you attach yourself to one genre of film?
I'm not the kind of director who immerses himself in only one genre. I watch genre films from time to time, because it's interesting for me to think about the structure of the genres themselves from a dramaturgical point of view. My films are not plot-driven but character-driven. I like to add a bit of comedy and lightness, because a good drama can't do without a wide emotional palette. In character-driven films, the human perspective is very important to me.
In the current times, we have to go through repeated quarantines. What was then and is now the time for you as a film and editing director? Perhaps it brings you more than just losses in terms of work?
When the first wave of quarantines came, I had a very good time, as strange as that sounds. At that time I was spending time in New York and I had just finished an editing job. I remember that I got another offer to edit. I was hesitant to accept because I was afraid I wouldn't have enough time. However, at the last minute I accepted.
The plan was to work remotely for the first month and then fly to Los Angeles. So I chose to go to Osterville, a town by the ocean. That's where my grandparents' small house is. I thought I was going to stay for about a couple of weeks, but I stayed the whole six months. It's a bit like Nida, you're surrounded by water and it's only ten minutes by bike to the ocean. I had a very fun routine: I would get up at 6am, spend a couple of hours writing the script, then go to the lake after breakfast, and then spend the rest of the time on editing.
During the second quarantine it's harder, in December I shot a teaser for another film, and I worked on a couple of international film scripts. There are a lot of projects and ideas that got pushed into the future during the previous quarantine and didn't materialise.
I remember you saying that long before your film "Motherland" came out, you hadn't planned to work in Lithuania, but it happened anyway. Did you really never think of making a film in Lithuania?
Before "Motherland", I never thought of making films in Lithuania. I didn't know much about Lithuanian cinema, I thought it was impossible. I didn't have any contacts, and Lithuanian filmmakers didn't know me. I thought it was difficult to get into this environment.
It's true that I studied for a year at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. I saw how others were getting work. I came back to America because I could find work faster, and it was easier to make contacts and offers. In Lithuania, everything seemed very impossible.
If we look at "California" and "Motherland", these films seem to be united by the theme of the search for the ideal. "California" is about an immigrant Lithuanian not finding the American dream when he emigrates to the US, while in "Motherland" Lithuanians returning to Lithuania from America do not find the Lithuania they imagined. Are these themes a coincidence, or are they more of an issue?
It is a completely unconscious decision. I certainly didn't think that, for example, I would now create the reverse of "California". However, I think it shows very clearly some of my thoughts leaning towards this topic.
In your childhood, you never let the camera out of your hands in your spare time, you made amateur videos. Was it just a pastime at the time, or did you have dreams of working in the film industry?
The very beginning was when my friend and I were playing soldiers and the time came when we realised that it was a shame to do it. My friend's father had a camera. Eventually we started filming toy car models, zooming in on a house, and combining that with our acting. Of course, this is childish creativity, but I realise through my memories that it was from that moment that I fell in love with cinema.
During my first quarantine, my friend Andrius Labašauskas, a sculptor, asked me to find a video where I had once filmed one of his creations. While looking for this video footage, I also looked through my old video archives. It seems that until then I didn't realise how much I was torturing my friends by filming them, scripting them and telling them to participate in them. Those videos were never finished.
If someone had asked me a year ago how many short films I had made, I would have counted three films for my Master's degree and a couple of others. How many tests and experiments there were in that archive video material, only some of them are a shame and others are the opposite.
As a child, amateur video-making was a much more interesting activity than games. I think the attraction to cinema was somewhere in me from before. Before that, I was studying politics and history, and I attended a video club. Maybe I didn't dare to make it clear to myself then that I wanted to do cinema seriously.
How did it work to study film as a craft rather than as an art form when you were studying at The American Film Institute?
I was hoping for a cinematic utopia, that all the future Godars would sit around and discuss philosophical issues. But the reality is different. I remember Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained hadn't been released yet, and I had already received the script through a friend's acquaintances. Even before the film was released, many people already knew that Q. Tarantino western. The students at the institute were talking amongst themselves that we should make westerns, because only such films would be profitable. When I realised that this was their approach, I was shocked. I had a rather naive understanding of how the film industry works, especially in Los Angeles. Here, cinema is seen as a business, not as art.
I didn't think the films made by one teacher were very good. Nevertheless, I think much more about his classes than any other teacher. He had a very good understanding of the concept of directing, and he looked at cinema first and foremost as a craft. I remember what was the most difficult part of these lectures: he would bring in a one- or two-page script that seemed very uninteresting and maybe even superficial, and then he would ask you to think about what the scene would look like, to choose the actors, and to film it. He would show how a lot of meanings and layers can emerge from that superficial script.
I would agree that the craft side of cinema is one of the most important. It's easy to get lost in ego games, to think that here you are as a filmmaker, making real art. But there is a lot of craft in this industry.
Do you see yourself in the field of independent cinema so far?
If someone offered me to work on Marvel films, I wouldn't know what to do with it all. For now, it is possible to make a living from independent filmmaking. Nevertheless, it is very unstable, and this instability also affects my personal life plans. I am fortunate that the work of an editor provides a firmer base and could continue to do so, but I often give up this work in order to devote more time to my work.
Do you still feel that you have found a way to express yourself in cinema during this time? Are you still searching for yourself?
From a craft point of view, I would like to think that this is just the beginning. In terms of taste, I think I know much better what I like. I feel more solid on the dramaturgical side. However, in terms of filmmaking in general, I would be very surprised if there was even one director in the world who thought he had achieved everything. If there are any, they are ego maniacs. Terrence Malick, the same film director, was very much in search of himself. Perhaps Steven Spielberg already understands himself and knows what he is doing, he has created a real film-making factory.
What I have learnt from "Motherland" - which has nothing to do with cinema itself - is that it is a real waste of energy and time to feel stressed about what you cannot change. Whether you win an award or whether you don't get into a festival, none of these things are the most important.
What are you like as a spectator? Do you remember any films or video works that have had a memorable impact on you?
If I liked a film a lot, it means that I didn't think about framing or creative decisions or dramaturgy at the time. It's rare, but it happens anyway. Then I realise that I need to see the film several more times. When a film can draw out a childlike reaction from you, when you feel that you are lost, your heart is squeezed and you don't know what's happening to you, and the film has started and it's over, that's what it's like, trying to get a kind of a drug, trying to find something else that could give you that kind of satisfaction.
What does your latest film mean to you? Why should the audience see it?
This film is about human relationships. The title says "Love Stories" but this is meant with a bit of irony. In truth, all the stories are about people desperately seeking love - seeking connection. I think that is the motor of every human being - we want to love and we want to be loved. It's what drives us and it is what binds us as humans. Right now we live in a society that is so fractured. There is so much anger toward one another, so much fear, so much judgment of the "other." On every side of the political spectrum, people forget that deep down we are far more similar than different. This film is about that. It doesn't matter if you are old, young, male, female, queer, straight, American, Polish, Israeli, whatever... At our core we are all living the same human experience, with the same pain, loneliness, joy, and love. That's what being human is - and this film will hopefully remind viewers of this.
