The Canadian cities Montreal and Ottawa are organising the annual Baltic-Nordic film festival Bright Nights during May-June 2011. In collaboration with Baltic and Nordic nations, the Canadian Film institute premiered festival of films from Northern European countries, among them Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Denmark and Lithuania.

Lithuania is represented by the movie director Rasa Miskinyte’s The Bug Trainer. The movie depicts a story of one of the giants of animation, Lithuania born Russian-French animator Ladislas Starewitch. A real historical figure, Starewitch (1882-1965) was a pioneer of puppet animation and is arguably one of the world’s forgotten film geniuses, who used insects and other animals as protagonists in his stop-motion pictures. In The Bug Trainer dir. Rasa Miskinyte tries to “decode” Starewitch by exploring his creative process, his eccentric biography and, above all, his remarkable animated films.

Rasa Miskinyte is a well known movie producer in Lithuania; in 2009 she received a Silver Crane - Lithuanian film industry award for best professional job for The Bug Trainer also.

This summer, viewers in Canada also got a chance to approach to a remarkable story of animator Ladislas Starewitch during the Bright Lights film festival.