Lithuanian Cultural Evening

Stanford University Libraries invites you to celebrate Lithuania’s independence on March 11 at Cubberley Auditorium.

The evening will feature “The Other Dream Team,” a film about the remarkable story of the Lithuanian basketball team that won the 1992 Olympic Bronze medal less than a year after Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union. The film director Marius Markevicius will be present to answer questions after the film.

Watch the trailer here.

Lithuanian cultural historian Violeta Davoliute-Opgenorth will answer questions after the film and also discuss how basketball was a form of resistance through her talk, “Fact, Fiction and Memory: Representations of the Postwar Fight for Lithuanian Independence From Soviet Times to the Present.”  She will outline the various ways Lithuanians resisted Soviet rule during the second half of the 20th century. Lithuania was the first republic to declare independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990, an act that led to an economic blockade from Moscow but also catalyzed the breakup of the USSR in August 1991.

Dr. Violeta Davoliute-Opgenorth is a senior researcher at the Department of Contemporary History, Vilnius University. She has published widely on the cultural history of Lithuania and Eastern Europe and is the author of The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War, published by Routledge in 2013.

PROGRAM:

5:30-6:30 pm: Reception hosted by Stanford University Libraries

6:30-6:40 pm: Opening words by Dennis Garrison, Honorary Consul of Lithuania

6:40-7:00 pm: Dr. Violeta Davoliute-Upgenorth will discuss “Fact, Fiction and Memory: Representations of the Postwar Fight for Lithuanian Independence From Soviet Times to the Present.”

7:00-8:30 pm: Screening of  “The Other Dream Team”(2012). The film will be followed by Q&A with Marius Markevicius and Violeta Davoliute-Upgenorth.

The event, which is in English, aims to bring together Stanford faculty, staff and students as well as local Baltic communities and people interested in Baltic heritage. It is free and open to the public.

Participants are asked to register by March 9 or 650-847-9115.

For additional information, please contact Liisi Esse.

Have questions about Lithuanian Cultural Evening at Stanford?
Contact Baltic Studies at Stanford University Libraries