ABOUT LAND OF SONGS

From the Margaret Mead Film Festival:

"Inspired by their grandmother’s vivid accounts of her WWII-era childhood, first-time sibling filmmakers Aldona (director) and Julian Watts (cinematographer) travel to Lithuania with family. They arrive in Dainava, a region known as the “Land of Songs,” where they meet a sprightly group of women who have kept their village’s ancient folk-singing tradition vibrant and essential through decades of war, occupation, and youth flight. When the filmmakers return years later, only five of the grandmothers are still alive. Land of Songs is a tender, poetic record of the lives of these remarkable women and an eloquent testament to heritage—and to the universal language of folk music."

Land of Songs had its World Premiere at at the Vilnius International Film Festival in Lithuania in 2015. It had its North American premiere with the Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where it received the Filmmaker Award Special Mention. It also received the Audience Award at the 2016 Chicago European Film Festival and was voted back the following year for an encore screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It received support from the San Francisco Film Society and was selected for the Independent Filmmaker Project's 2014 Spotlight on Documentaries at Film Week in New York City.