Regained Screens: Contemporary Documentary Film Culture in Lithuania

The focus of this article is contemporary documentary film culture in Lithuania. Through the case study of the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival (VDFF), I would like to argue that documentary culture has been going through a process of hybridisation in recent years. Firstly, I will outline the context of the global situation of documentary cinema, then I will show the origin and importance of VDFF in that context. I will use postcolonial studies and decoloniality to explain the process of contemporary documentary film culture in Lithuania. My research is contextualised in the new field of film festivals research in film studies. The article is based on a few semi-structured interviews, detailed analyses of catalogues of few events in Lithuania before VDFF and catalogues of VDFF, and an analysis of international festivals' research texts.