EVENING NEWS. Ieva Alexandrova-Eklone’s fateful mass views in the cinema

Talking about her chosen favorite photograph, which was taken in 1990, actress Ieva Aleksandrova-Eklone says that, like many of her peers, she had not yet decided what to do after graduating from high school: “My results were excellent, but there was no one direction, interests that I would like to study further. Pretty hopeless situation. But then a fateful offer came, which I will tell you all about in turn.»

The main thing is that there are horses!

At that time, Ieva’s mother worked in the cafe “Turaida”, which was located near the Daile Theater. “Both cinema and theater people often visited there, so I was able to attend Daile Theater performances, because the actors gave invitations to my mother. One of the regular customers who became a friend of our family was Aleksandrs Zhukovskis or Žukiņš, as my mother fondly called him. One winter day, during the school holidays, he told me that soon he was going to Madonna to film mass scenes, that I could go with him if I wanted to try filming. Accommodation is provided at the Madonna hotel, there will be food, the fee will also be paid, and horses will be in the filming. That was enough for me, because the main argument was that there are horses!”

Only in Madona did Ieva find out that she had come to film a mass scene for director Varas Brasla’s film “Times of Surveyors”: “We filmed a funeral scene. My task was to run after a horse-drawn sleigh, try to catch it and jump into it. I ran, stumbled, fell and ran again, but I caught the horse! This shot is also left in the film. After that, you also had to tune yourself. It was also a whole adventure: I went to the Riga film studio, where there was a sound studio in the long labyrinth of corridors, and there I was met by the sound director Gļebs (I don’t remember his last name). He told me that I should try to hit “myself” on top of the sound. I succeeded, and Gleb praised me and said that he would call for dubbing, that I had a good “hearing”.

Really “sick” with cinema

The picture chosen by Ieva is from the second day of filming, where she was chosen as the backup of the actress Indra Burkovska. “So my back was filmed together with the wonderful actor Jānis Paukštello, with whom we have later both acted in the cinema (with director Ilona Brūvere in the film “Figures”) and met several times on the stage of the Daile Theater,” the actress adds and admits that it is in this mass during the filming of the scenes, it really got “sick” with cinema. “I saw how the director works with the actors, how he sets up the shot, how the actors prepare for the role. I felt these feelings with every cell of my being and realized that this is what I want to do.” After that, at some point, Ieva told Indra Burkovska that she was to blame for her choice of profession, because – “if I hadn’t played Olinieta’s back, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten ‘sick’ with this so beautiful, but at the same time so cruel profession…”.

After that, Ieva learned from Žukas that the admission to the Film Actors Studio was taking place: “The competition was huge, I was insanely worried, and the only thing I remember from the selection is that Aina Matīsa asked me to play an etude of how I milk a cow. I was admitted to the course together with the current actors Baiba Brokas, Zani Vadkiņa, Andri Keiša. Already in my first year, I got my first role with Maija Dance in the series “The person who knows everything” and in the movie “Figures” – with my beloved Ilona Brewer, whom I call my movie mom, because I have participated in many of her works in the cinema and on stage.”

The actress does not hide that she loves cinema more than theater. «I have a feeling that cinema has more magic, more surprise, because you never know what the final result will be, which will be seen in the film. That’s why I’m really looking forward to the result of Vlad Kovalyov’s TV series “Uninvited Guests”, where I participated this summer. Knowing Vlad, he will not disappoint the audience!”