Klostės
Folds/Pleats
Klostės translating as Folds/Pleats in English is a 4k nonverbal monochromatic stop-motion animated Feature film based on a number of short stories, myths, and hidden histories of the Inter-War Modernist city of Kaunas Lithuania. This Art film is directed by Aideen Barry and is a socially engaged moving image work created by citizens; artists, teachers, musicians, composers, young people, children, residents and volunteer groups whose main aim is to interpret and bring to life the invisible stories of this wunderkammer of a city of modernist gems.
The films main scenes are inspired by short stories written by amateur and professional writers under the supervision of Kaunas based acclaimed writer Sandra Bernotaitė. The film stars Kaunas residents, dancers from the internationally acclaimed Dance Group AURA and is accompanied by compositional arrangements and sculpted sound scores by the award winning composers Arūnas Periokas and Patris Židelevičius , and Ieva Raubytė again who’s practises are all connected to this former capital of Lithuania.
Barry has worked with hundreds of school children, young people, third level students, and volunteers to impart the secrets of early film making inspired by interwar filmmakers Stasys Ušinskas and Vladislavas Starevičius, who also had connections to the city. Largely filmed, constructed and create through workshops, onsite locations this film has evolved to withstand and be influenced by a global pandemic of mammoth proportions. Still the project has rolled on with its first series of production shoots shot in historic locations such as; Sugihara Museum, In Galunes Museum, The Kaunas Brick Factory, and other sites of historical Modernist importance.
The Protagonists are at times noted historical figures, and then those who have been forgotten through the folds of time, and of course the modernist interwar buildings themselves become characters within the films construction too. Gender bending icons, ethnic minority character and progressive historical protagonists all become the focus of Barry's moving image cloth.
The title "Klostės" means Folds or Pleats when it is directly translated. It refers to a number of different active processes employed in the film. Firstly it is a theoretical and conceptual notion as to how time behaves, looping or folding back on itself or having the appearance of doing so. It also refers to the physical construction of the stopmotion image which is created by thousands upon thousands of visual fictions to create an optical illusion of magic or to create a feeling of disbelief in the viewer. This instruction of folding was the basis for a number of the movements that have been choreographed by the dancers and actors in the film, as well as the musicians and composers.