The Mammoth Hunt

Our story begins in 1968, then famous Lithuanian theatre director Jonas Jurasas directed a scandalous, avant-garde, anti-Soviet performance “The Mammoth Hunt”. Every time the performance was shown the theatre was overcrowded. Soon, the performance was announced to be anti-Soviet and was abolished from the repertoire. Nobody expected the performance to be revived for a night… After two months, under conspiracy conditions, a closed audience locked themselves in the theatre-hall for the night and recorded the entire performance. But after so many years the film with the documented performance seems to have been entirely lost. The lost celluloid film reel has become entangled with legends. The “The Mammoth Hunt” is a detective story about a film reel that for many years has been thought to be lost. But the film has wider horizons than just one performance. It reveals a complex history of occupation and human drama when certain circumstances force artists to choose between betrayal and loyalty, bravery and conformation. Through the destiny of theatre director Jonas Jurasas it is possible to examine the endless obstacles and difficulties of being an ideologically dangerous artist in the soviet era. And whether they did overcome the system, or did the system eventually overcome them?