From Vilnius to Vilnius

I distinctly remember seeing one of Samuel Bak’s images as a child. Although I had no idea what I was looking at, the shapes of the objects in the paintings made an impression on me. The chess pawns had seemed disturbingly realistic. A few years later, I randomly met Samuel Bak in Boston. I heard his story, and after managing to get some funding, I decided to make a short film on his life. Once I learned about the street he grew up in, I booked my tickets for Vilnius!

The most fascinating aspect that highlights Bak’s story is that his life came a full circe: He was born in Vilnius, was one of the very few Lithuanian Jews to survive the Holocaust, and 70 years later, after a successful international career in painting, a museum was opened to honor his work back where he was born.

Angelos Bougas