Making Films In Latvia - First Motion

idealism, memories and spiritual retreat film works as an answer to modernizing
forces which Soviet period presented as ideological restraints. Movie shows
cinematographer’s favour towards a soft-focus technique and natural lighting.
Reconstruction of natural light was closely associated with skilful imitation of candle
light, albeit at times it was restrained by fairly dark lenses that were obtainable in the
period. Filmed subjects were drawn from landscape and rural domestic life, and
transformed into allegoric and symbolic entities by camera work. Pictorialism effect
was also enhanced by compositions characteristic to painting, as well as slow tracking
shots that almost penetrates this pictorial frame.
Since early 1970s also the use of rapid and fast motion shots becomes apparent in
Riga film studio pictures. Mostly these shots were exercised in comedies in order to
compress or expand time. Nevertheless it was not a widespread practice.
And yet the most significant development in the visuality of Latvian filmmaking was
closely linked to the socio-political and socio-economical transformations in the
Soviet Union of the 1980s. The stage in the history of the country opened with the
emergence of the glasnost and perestroika concepts and came to conclusion with the
breakdown of the Soviet Union and the renewed Latvian independence in 1991. The
socio-political transformations meant the necessary conditions and opportunities for a
new modernist reflection to be introduced into the local film industry.
At this period, it is finally possible to localise the concept of modernism in the context
of Latvian filmmaking so that it would actually fit its linguistic meaning: the topical
and the new, with the topical value is sharp contrast with the old one. The modernist
trends in Latvian films are best described by the French post-war film theorists’ views
on the emergence of a new movement centred on the dichotomy of the classical vs.
the modern. The most typical features of the trend were best captured by the film
theorist David Bordwell in his analysis of parametric narration: abstraction, reflection,
subjectivity. Abstraction as ambiguity of interpretation; reflection as the intellectual
involvement of the viewer into the construction of the storyline and subjectivity as the
subjective nature of the story, as often as not connected with the character’s own
mental picture of the world. The actualisation of said elements also conform to the
opinion expressed by Alexandre Astruc: namely, that cinema has to offer the same
intellectual expression as literature or drama, as well as the philosopher Gilles
Deleuze’s view that modernist cinema is the best representation of the abstraction of
modern-day thinking.
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