Mon 18.09.
20:00
Cinema
Arsenal 1
Director
Ivars Kraulītis
USSR, Latvian SSR / 1961
24 min.
/ 35 mm
/ Without dialogue
BALTIE ZVANI, one of the most significant works of Latvian cinema, screens beforehand. It marks the beginning of the Riga school of poetic documentary and is a sensitive portrait of the city of Riga and its inhabitants at the start of the 60s.
Director
Uldis Brauns
USSR, Latvian SSR / 1967
73 min.
/ 35 mm
/ russian intertitles
This documentary, whose title references the size of the USSR’s population at the time, was shot to coincide with the anniversary of the October Revolution in just one year by four teams coordinated from Riga who filmed in several Soviet Republics. Screenwriter Herz Frank and cinematographer and director Uldis Brauns were influenced by the same idea that Dziga Vertov’s film Kolybelnaya (Lullaby, 1937) was based on. The associative montage connects moments in the lives of individual Soviet citizens that reflect both the private and the wider society, coming together to form a heightened collective image of happy human existence. This cinematic epic does away with language entirely and is accompanied by the music of Latvian composer Raimonds Pauls, who was still unknown at the time and only became a Soviet star later. (nf/gv)