Klostės (Folds)
Stills
About
Klostės translated as Pleats or Folds is a Black & White non verbal 67 Minute feature film created by the People of Kaunas Lithuania together with Artist &
Film-maker Aideen Barry. This Art film was commissioned by Kaunas 2022, The European Capital of Culture.
The film takes inspiration from Kaunas Architectural Modernism and the hidden histories associated with the magical city.
© Aideen Barry 2021 All rights reserved
Klostės/Pleats is a metaphor for how time folds like fabric. It is a metaphor for how things can appear to repeat or loop. It is also an architectural trope for a repeat pattern, evident in Kaunas Interwar-Modern-ism. Klostės is a reference to how a film constructed out of thousands and thousands of still photographs
creates a visual fiction or illusion., this is is how this film is sculpted. Huge amounts of investment goes into orchestrating a series of elaborate images to create a stop-motion animation. There is also a folding of time: forgotten stories, othered voices are returned from the abyss of time and represented, they are brought back into the Fold. Folding stories within stories, buildings within buildings like a clever-ly constructed origami or pop up book. Protagonists appear out of objects, there is magic everywhere. Smoke and Mirrors are not only at play but are a part of the very direction that goes into constructing
every gesture or movement. The Actors and AURA dancers who are partner collaborators in this project take this notion of folding into account in their gestures and nuanced movements. The composers and Foley artists too play with time to overlay or pleat a sound one on top of the other to create rich labyrinths of audible fabric that enrich the film.This film is a socially engaged work, in that it has been laboured and created by hundreds of individuals to construct a complex series of stories and narratives, visual art, props, performances and audio visual experiences. This army is invisible, but it has been a body of creative people who have fold- ing this visual art and filmic poem together create this moving image pleat.
Klostės is a socially engaged film project created in collaboration with artists, composers, performers, actors, musicians and volunteers made up of the
citizens of the city of Kaunas. The engagement of over five hundred children and young people in workshops in Short story writing, film directing, optical illusion workshops, Stop-motion Animation workshops, introductions into Green Screen Technology & Prop Creation has also been intentional. This project set about fostering enthusiasm for this architectural and visual cultural heritage of this city. These groups of future artists have directed and made their own animated shorts adding further elements to the film project and an army of volunteers are currently engaged in large aspects of its production
from workshop supervision, extra roles, artistic production, makeup and special effects. The majority of Cast, Crew and Production of this film is made of people who live in this City. It is a deliberate intervention on behalf of Kaunas 2022 and the Artist & Director Aideen Barry to empower the creatives of this Contemporary Kaunas in the authorship of the film. The film features dancers
and actors from the acclaimed International Dance Troupe AURA as protagonists in the Roles of forgotten “Others” of Kaunas.