Making Films In Latvia - First Motion

Līva Pētersone
26
Latvian Documentary Cinema: the New Generation
In Latvian cinema, similar to national cinemas elsewhere, the term
“documentary” has served various purposes. In the 1930s, newsreels and so-called
“culture films” were, in part, manifestations of state ideology of the time, enhancing
the nationalistic notions exerted by the newly-formed Latvian free state.
After the World War II, starting with the Soviet occupation – official and
“parade films” - documentaries and newsreels defined by the guidelines of Socialist
realism, bearing a little relevance to the term “documentary”, were the only modes of
documentary cinema.
In the 1960s, during the so-called thaw period of certain blossoming in social
life and art, the movement of the Riga School of Poetic Documentary Cinema was
characterized by a cinematographic change in vision (towards individualism) and
quest for the cinematic/artistic poeticism in shooting ordinary people and quotidian
life. The movement had a profound effect on the formal and ideological aspects of
films of the later decades to come. In the late 1980s, director and cinematographer
Juris Podnieks was one of the foremost figures to reveal the essence of the political
and social friction of the society through intimate individual portraits.
Presently, Latvian documentary cinema is in a state of great diversity.
Following the years of output mainly controlled at the state level, 20 years after the
end of the Soviet rule, Latvian filmmakers have come to define their very own, vastly
varied, subject matter and cinematic language. The films produced in the recent years
– and mainly by the relatively young generation of filmmakers – could be loosely
described as adhering to several thematic groups. First, there are explorations of
history, conflict, World War II, and ensuing trauma: films consisting mainly of
archive footage compilations, present-day research on the subject and interviews,
attempting to present a multi-lateral view on the controversial historical topics.
Another, slightly different, is a body of films dealing with examinations of personal
histories through an individual prism, focusing on a single or several characters to
convey the ways collective history has altered (and vice-versa) personal histories. The
third group involves a look at contemporary social issues in Latvia, jarring political
conflicts, variously deprived individuals, etc. Next, there is a kind of “exotic stories”,