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To be a harp player or a proffesional guard-for-hire? A young musician, at the very beginnig of his professional career. As many creative-minded young people in Latvia, he faces a dilemma: to devote his life to art or to change his profession and live a financially more guaranteed life. Young harp-player’s story and his creative road in the pragmatic world of today.
Some people collect family albums. Sarmīte Sīle, an accomplished arts scholar, takes a nude photo of herself every ten years. Behind this unique series of nude photos that span a lifetime, is her story.
A documentary about the legendary personality at Latvian Radio - Gunārs Jākobsons.
Vija Vetra is the famous Latvian dancer and choreographer. She was admired for her dancing by Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. She was loved by the world famous American poet Robert Lowell. She was the first to introduce sacred dance into church services in many different countries around the world. She has learned to cross freely the cultural boundaries, feeling equally at home both in Eastern and Western dance traditions. Born in Latvia, she has spent her life in different parts of the world and the camera traces her in the film (from India in 70ies where she had been renowned as "Vijaya", to New York, Greece, and Latvia today). The film is as colorful as her life: loud and happy like the feelings aroused by her splendid performance, deep and unknowable like her inner world, and sad, quiet and calm like loneliness itself?
World War II separated the Latvian nation into two parts. Fleeing Soviet occupation, a large part of the people left their homeland by the Baltic Sea and sought refuge in the West. New York’s Hell’s Kitchen district became their home and the core of Latvian cultural exiles became young poets and artists. The film traces across half a century to show their life today and what has happened to those young writers and poets (the Troubadour – Gunars Silins, the Internal Dissident – Janis Kreslins, Philosopher the Dionisios – Robert Muks, the Estranged One – Rita Gale, the Observer – Aina Kraujiete, the Outsider – Dzintars Sodums) in their effort to combine the trends of global culture with their ethnic identity, when two cultures, Latvian and American, intersected.
In commemorating WWII events in Latvia each year, several “controversial dates” arise. These are remembrance dates that are viewed differently by Latvians, Russians and Jews. The film searches for answers through three main characters, each a representative of their nationality, and categorical in their opposing way of thinking. Why is a date that is celebrated and honoured by one side, also a symbol of deep pain and injustice for another? Why are there, to this day, in a country as small as Latvia, three or more completely differing historical interpretations?
Prayer for a Home shows how everyone needs shelter and a home – people in Latvia, Europe and troubled regions throughout the world. The film relates the story of the distinguished Latgalian poet Anna Rancāne and her family – her daughter Terēze, her grandson Daniel, and Daniel’s father, Dara Muhammad Ali – who are trying to stick together despite unfortunate circumstances. Even though Terēze and Anna are Catholic, while Dara is a Muslim from Kurdistan, their love transcends religious, national and cultural prejudice. However, due to circumstances beyond their control, the family is not destined to remain together, despite doing everything they can to stay close.
Through a vast coverage of exclusive archive materials and interviews and personally narrated by his wife, Yelena Bonner, the story of the life of Andrei Sakharov, the most famous Soviet dissident, Nobel Peace Prize winner and the creator of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, is revealed.
A family film based on the book Bille by Vizma Belševica. An extraordinary, lonely yet spiritually strong little girl attempts to comprehend the adult world, which in her eyes is very contradictory, and to prove her own value despite the ignorance and lack of appreciation by her family in late 1930s. Bille tries to find an escape in her vivid imagination.
When Lyudmila Ivanova made her infamous claim during a US-Soviet TV programme in 1986 that ‘There is no sex in the USSR!’, her comment – although roundly mocked at the time – revealed a certain truth about Soviet attitudes towards sex and the ways in which it was controlled by the regime, rendering it largely invisible. With this documentary, the director takes us through 70 years of Soviet history to highlight the interplay between sex, politics and society and the changing meanings attached to sex and sexuality under different General Secretaries.