Found footage has always interested me. Ever since the photographic medium became easily available as a consumer product, countless photographs capturing everyday life have been made—and over the years, many have been lost to time. Occasionally, they resurface in flea markets, second-hand shops, or in the most unexpected places. Captured on film—before the advent of digital media and AI-generated imagery—these documents of events feel unmistakably genuine and true.

Before Dances – Coffee and Cake is an installation piece created for the annual Analogue Photography and Film Festival exhibition “Būtis ir Buitis” (Vilnius, Lithuania). It consists of contact prints from developed film dating back to Soviet-occupied Lithuania in 1983–84, found in the basement of a music school in Kaunas, Lithuania. The selected prints offer glimpses into the lives of unknown people enjoying coffee and cake—moments of happiness. In these fragments, a subjective history of the Soviet era in Lithuania emerges—one that the oppressive regime of the time could not control.