Hunger Strike Breakfast

Karolis Kaupinis’s second feature film, Hunger Strike Breakfast, takes a cinéma vérité approach and adds a dose of absurdism to the crucial Lithuanian historical events of January 1991. The Soviet Armed Forces invaded the southernmost Baltic country not long after its declaration of independence in a violent grab of straws by Mikhail Gorbachev to reassert Soviet domination over the country. The invasion was largely thwarted by civilian street protestors, though the Lithuanian Radio and Television headquarters was taken by the invading army. Hundreds lost their jobs. Kaupinis’s film, his second to realize an episode of his homeland’s history, shows the passionate though meek protest raised by a few of the now jobless media figures.

Television announcer and broadcaster Daiva, played sombrely and thoughtfully by 45-year-old Ineta Stasiulytė, leads the small protest and encampment at the base of the headquarters. Her boss, an older television director Mykolas (Arvydas Dapšys, with 65 years of age), is fraught with worry about Soviet backlash should the invaders reassert power fully. Initially, they annoy struggling father and actor Sigis (Paulius Pinigis, the youngest of three, aged 37), who is worried they will wake his child, with their ruckus of sound, but he eventually joins their cause. They struggle to earn the attention of many more people on either side of the cause, so Sigis, recalling advice from an American book, proposes a hunger strike – a strike that failed to ever fully convince this viewer of actual physical hunger.

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