It is not easy to come up with a fresh introduction every year when it comes to a classically traditional event: the May 4th Latvian Film Marathon organized by the National Cinema Center (NKC) is here again, and with the change in the habits of moviegoers prompted by the pandemic, it has even doubled in size, as it operates in two formats in parallel : regular in-person screenings in the cinema over the years Splendid Palace the holiday program on the NKC portal is again supplemented Filmas.lv, which is available worldwide during the holidays. And the plural used here is not an error of carelessness – this year, all thirteen films included in the selection of the portal will be available to watch on May 3 and 4, as the program is dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the great poet and screenwriter Imantas Ziedonis (1933–2013), and Ziedonis, as you know, was born on May 3rd.
Cinema fishing of the poet
In the portal Filmas.lv The collected selection, created in close cooperation with the National Film Archive of the Latvian National Archives, is a unique opportunity to see in one place all the most significant traces that Imants Ziedonis left in the history of Latvian cinema. It is significant that the poet joined Latvian cinematographers for the first time at a very important moment, in the mid-60s, when documentary cinema was just beginning to develop into the later legendary poetic style of Riga. The movie Annual report (1965) was a turning point that confirmed the innovative power of the new generation of documentarians, solidifying their position against the rusting clichés of the old generation. This film was created by an enviably talented team: screenwriters Imants Ziedonis and Hercs Franks, director Aivars Freimanis and cinematographer Ivars Seleckis searched all over Latvia for capacious poetic images in order to create a new and very human view of Latvia in the mid-60s, a deep and meaningful “republic anniversary film ” (in which you hardly feel the obligatory ideological imprint of the era).
The blessed influence of the reportage of the year on the history of Latvian cinema is also manifested in the fact that the friendship between screenwriter Imantas Ziedonis and director Aivaras Freimani was formed in this film and bore valuable fruit in the future. In Freiman’s memoirs, written many decades later, we read that in this period of the 1960s, they began to sign their correspondence as Ķudelis and Muņģis – old names for fishing things that happened to be on the tongue while delving into the lives of fishermen and working on a documentary film. It breaks (1969). The poet born in the fishermen’s environment of Ragaciem turned out to be the right companion for Freiman, who has been together with cameraman Ivars Selecki since the film The coast (1963) felt a special attraction to the harsh world of fishing men, and the film It breaks there is an unusual proof of this.
The screen shows how close the filmmakers were able to get to their characters, both literally and figuratively. There, credit goes both to the skill of cameraman Selecki to fit in fishing boats and boats of various sizes, and to his heroism, going fishing with him in the early mornings or in autumn storms, as well as already in the film The coast the proven method of living in a fishing village for a long time, until the locals get completely used to the presence of “Riga tirlini” and no longer pose for the movie camera.
But most of all It breaks surprises with the authors’ approach to the creation of the soundtrack – although the opening credits promise that “there will be no actors in this film”, the behind-the-scenes text is spoken by Juris Strenga, moreover, in a completely atypical, warmly ironic and comic intonation for the era, which we will later hear in Ivars Seleckas’s film Crossroads (1988). A very unusual invention is the poetry of Imantas Ziedoņis, included in the behind-the-scenes text and specially written for the film, which Juris Strenga sometimes reads, sometimes sings (composer Đudgards Gedravićs), even the involvement of the men’s choir in the singing sounds too pathetic to modern ears, but it is precisely in Ziedoņas’s poetry that the most vivid formulations about the important (“It is said that people on earth / Each making sense for themselves. / I don’t know, for me it is a place / Where they bring herrings to betray…”). If we remember that film scholar Inga Pērkone always mentions the film It breaks as one of the most radical examples of modernism in Latvian culture, it is clear that you should not miss the portal Filmas.lv opportunity to experience this special film.
Looking at the clouds
Just the movies It breaks during the shooting, looking at the white cumulus clouds, Imants Ziedonis is said to have suggested to Aivars Freimanis that “it should be filmed The White Paper!”, moreover, it is supposed to be done by documentarians. As we now know, the idea of the film had to wait for a whole ten years until it was necessary to celebrate the centenary of the writer Jānis Jaunsudrabiņš, but the film conceived by Ziedoņš and Freimaņi and created in harmonious cooperation Boy (1977) can still be safely attributed to the golden fund of Latvian cinema. Like the adaptation of Raina’s play Blow wind! (1973), although in the case of this film, the relationship between the co-authors of the script was radically different – it turned out that Imantas Ziedonis and the director Gunars Pies each have their own point of view on the basic conflict of Rainis’s play, and the contradictions are so serious that Ziedonis even considered it necessary to publicly renounce co-authorship and participation in the production of this film. Today, such a fact gives an opportunity for interesting reflections on the fact that completely different interpretations are possible for this Rainis plot.
The 70s also includes the unusual documentary Imants Ziedonis. Portrait in folds (1979) – the work of the director Laima Žurginas, which according to external signs fits into the course she took at that time towards portraying important cultural figures, however, the poet did not want to simply give in to what the director would see in him, and took the reins in his own hands. As Ziedonis later said in an interview, the original idea was completely crazy: “… it occurred to me and I instructed her to film only the wind – I could comment on the wind, and then there would be a film about me as well.” However, the ultimately chosen “grammatical” solution is also an unusual and effective structure, the two co-authors even received Kristapa the Great award for the best script for a documentary film.
The Ziedonis jubilee selection also includes Anša Epner’s feature film I am a Latvian (1990), which was created over two years during the revival period, visiting exiled Latvians in different parts of the world. The behind-the-scenes text read in Ziedonis’s own voice elevates this film above ordinary “excursion films” and gives it the power of deep national excitement. Ivar Selecki’s documentary is an amazing adventure Walking with a crocodile (1995) – it was Ziedonis who thought that a monument in the shape of a crocodile should be placed instead of the family house of the world-famous Australian crocodile hunter, Arvīdas Blumenthals, who was born in Dundaga, and this reinforced concrete giant created by Oļeg Skarainas is carried by four gray ladies, Arvīda’s classmates, in a horse-drawn carriage through the whole of Kurzeme, commemorating also other guys scattered and lost in the storms of war.
In the cinema
An important contribution of Imantas Ziedonis to Latvian cinema is the episodic but bright collaboration with the animation director Rozi Stiebra, and this section allows you to cross the bridge from the portal Filmas.lv to the cinema Splendid Palace, where the May 4 animation screening will feature both the legendary dog Fun and his fight with the wind, as well as Thimble, who wanted to become a bell, and the Green Fairy Forest entering the city. This whole world of drawn animation will be introduced by a premiere with puppet characters: director Dace Rīdūze in the studio Animation team finished the movie Feet in the air about the adventures of a little bat child.
Premieres are traditionally an important part of the Latvian film marathon on May 4, and this year, too, two more creative teams are invited to the celebration: director Liene Laviņa and producer Sandijs Semjonovs have created a film Astra about the legendary dissident of the Revival period, Gunars Astra, while directors Kristians Luhaers and Mareks Berents, with the support of producer Arta ģiga, continue to study the history of Latvian rock music – in a series of films Their own will understand it’s the turn of the 80s. In the evening open-air screening from At 21.30 we will also be able to look into the previous period, the Latvian rock music of the 70s.
Not quite a premiere, but the first screening for a wider audience will be a screening of two new documentaries in the Great Hall at 15, which could be described with the popular phrase “Latvija then and now”: the film Vesmani’s return, created in a dynamic montage of archive materials, tells the story of the turning points in the history of Latvia and the first Speaker of the Saeima, lawyer and politician Frīdrihu Vesmani (1875–1941), while the extremely picturesque short film Laidwhich was made in the studio VFS Films as director Ieva Epner’s idea for the exhibition, with the talented contribution of cinematographers Valda Celmiņa and Baiba Kļava, confidently qualifies as “real cinema” – a little sad, but beautiful story about the last school year in a small rural school.
At the end, a special note: behind the brilliance and noise of the premieres, you should not miss the very valuable proceedings planned for the cinema on May 4 Splendid Palace In the small hall, five consecutive screenings of the most important feature-length documentaries of recent times, evaluated with the National Cinema Award, will be shown there Great Kristaps nominations and awards. So, the best that we currently have in documentary cinema is an authentic “Latvia as it is”.
Film marathon screenings will also take place in the surroundings of Riga.
2023-05-01 10:32:17
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