Born in 1960 in Kaunas, Navasaitis studied ecology in Lithuania and zoology in St Petersburg before entering the Moscow Film School (VGIK) in 1983, together with Bartas. The pair had already collaborated as co-directors on the impressive 12-minute documentary Tofalaria (1985). Shot in a mountainous area of Central Siberia, some 500 kilometres north of Lake Baikal, it comes across as a lyrical, endearing 'last testament' about a nation of 300 people about to disappear.

Besides collaborating with Bartas on the latter's award-winning cycle of avant-garde shorts, features and experimental films - In Memory Of A Day Gone By (1990), Three Days (1991), Corridor (1995), Few Of Us (1996), and The House (1997) - Navasaitis has made a name for himself as a film poet with a trilogy of lyrical sketches about the seasons in Lithuania.

It began with Autumn Snow (1992), made during his VGIK studies and shot in the country, to be followed by Spring (1997), a depiction of springtime by the sea. Summer, shot last summer in the capital of Vilnius, will be released shortly.

In Kiemas, the focus is on the casual, indifferent relationships between neighbours living in an apartment house that dates from the interregnum period, where the courtyard is used as a playground by children. On the ground floor lives an elderly alcoholic - with his wife and 16-year-old daughter - who spends his time drinking beer with a young unemployed worker. Next door is an old shoemaker who lives with his cats.

On the first floor there is a young couple who always seem to be going through a crisis. Across the way is an aristocratic grandmother who worries about bad influences on her daughter and granddaughter. Among the cast, cineastes will welcome the return of Donatas Banionis, who plays the drunkard, after a 10-year absence from the screen.

Among Banionis' many memorable roles were the leads in Grigory Kozintsev's King Lear (1970) and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972). Ron Holloway