Janina Lapinskaitė
The film and television director, actor, and screenwriter Janina Lapinskaitė (born 1953) studied directing at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Between 1975 and 1999, she worked at Lithuanian National Radio and Television. Since 1995, she has been teaching at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Lapinskaitė has directed films with a style that walks a thin line between documentary and feature film. She focuses on eccentric characters and loners who, by their own volition or not, find themselves on the fringes of society. They live their lives in front of the camera, and sometimes they portray themselves. The documentary Venecijaus gyvenimas ir Cezario mirtis / The Life of Venecijus and Caesar’s Death (2002) won an award for work with non-professional actors at the Deboshir Pure Dreams Film Festival in St. Petersburg, and was chosen as the Best Baltic Film at the Riga International Film Forum Arsenals. From Eleonora, who has raised three dwarf children in Iš elfų gyvenimo / From the Lives of Elves (1996) and the animated inhabitants of the Antaviliai retirement home in Iš skruzdėlių gyvenimo / From the Lives of Ants (1995), to middle-aged art models in Venera su katinu / Venus with a Tom Cat (1997) and abandoned children in Iš avinėlių gyvenimo / From the Lives of Lambs (1998), they are people who are searching for the human ties they have lost, for harmony within themselves and the world. Since 1994, Lapinskaitė has made 13 documentaries and one full-length feature film, Stiklo šalis / The Land of Glass (2004), whose protagonist is a woman living in a small provincial town. The birth of her second child and the baby’s serious illness and the coldness of the person she loves fill the woman’s everyday life with worry, fear and anticipation. Based on a novella by the popular Lithuanian writer Vanda Juknaitė, it received an award for Best Director at the Tamil Nadu International Film Festival in India. In 2004, Lapinskaitė was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas.