Emanuelis Zingeris, chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, has said he plans to invite the Paris-based director, whose grandparents came from Lithuania, to get involved in making films about Lithuania's past, the Lithuanian daily Lietuvos Rytas writes.
Zingeris has been talking to French movie executives about joint Lithuanian-French film projects. There have been attempts to get the French interested in the stories of „Lithuanian Jeanne d’Arc" Emilija Pliaterytė and also Jewish professional puppet theater Maidim that operated before World War II.
If Lithuanian diplomats in Paris managed to organize a reception to honor Hazanavicius, Zingeris plans to ask the Oscar winner if he could join movies about Lithuania's incredible past, according to Lietuvos Rytas.
"It sounds like romantic idealism but I would really want such a personality to join these projects," Zingeris said.
Lithuanian Ambassador to France Jolanta Balciūnienė had congratulated Hazanavicius twice before the Oscars – after the Cannes International Film Festival and after he was nominated by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
"The fact that his surname is not Frenchified says a lot," the ambassador said, adding that she had heard the director used to attend Lithuanian community events some 20 years ago.
Hazanavicius' grandfather emigrated from Lithuania around 1920.
Hazanavicius' 2011 film, The Artist, won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 84th Academy Awards. It also won him the Academy Award for Best Director, and three more Oscars.
