Directing
In January 2011, Latvia commemorated the 20th anniversary of the tragic events that occurred in January 1991. Film producer Andris Slapiņš was killed, and cameraman Gvido Zvaigzne was fatally injured on the night of January 20th and died in hospital two weeks later. He was a young man whose talent had not yet fully flourished. His story, however, contains elements that make it not only possible to demonstrate his personal tragedy, but also the problematic existence of a young and creative person during an era when everything was crumbling around him. Destiny kept Gvido Zvaigzne from finishing his route, but the events and values of his life represent a model of his generation’s efforts.
The children who were sent to Siberia in 1941 have not seen their fathers – in their memories they recollect: “My father was arrested, he was sent to Vyatlag camp. He died there in March, 1942. He was not convicted. Father was tried in the autumn of 1942, when he was already dead, Moscow Troika verdict: 10 years in prison and confiscation of property...”The railcar moves along overgrown rails. For 70 years, the twelve participants of the journey have wanted to go to the places from where their fathers did not return. Among the harsh nature the tension on their faces shows.
The year 2011 marked the 70th anniversary of the deportations of June 14 1941, when 15 425 residents of Latvia (Latvians, Jews, Russians, Poles) were deported to Siberia. Among them there were 3 751 children aged up to 16. During the process men were separated from their families and sent to gulags, where many were sentenced to death, while others were imprisoned in labour camps. The facts of history and dry and few, but many of the victims and their children and grandchildren are still among us. During the summer of 2010, people who were deported to Siberia in 1941 as children joined their own children and a video production crew to travel back to the far North of Russia.
The significance of Kurts Fridrihsons reaches beyond the importance of his art, because during the Soviet period there were not many personalities refusing to comply with the regime while at the same time being outstanding artists. The charm and lightness that Fridrihsons preserved from pre-war civilized Europe and the free, lost Latvia was a harsh contrast to the realities of Soviet life. He was a model and inspiration for many people whose spiritual world refused to accept the existing system. The greater the distance between Fridrihsons’ lifetime and the present day, the more diversely and clearly we see the aloof and exceptional power of his personality. Unlike thousands of people who excuse themselves today for collaborating with the system with phrases like “Such were the times!”, justifying their non-resistance and compliance and their role as little bolts in the system, Fridrihsons – the loner and the example for a different option – is existentially important.
A documentary about Latvian freedom fighter Konstantīns Čakste who was the son of the first Latvian president and who perished in 1945.
The story of the world-renowned Liepāja-born cinematographer Eduard Tisse, whose wife was convinced it was he who created all the famous films of Sergei Eisenstein. The creators of the film develop the story and cross the lines drawn by biography, trying to understand the magic interaction between a cinematographer and a director, between the cinematographer and the object in front of his camera.
Andris Caune, Ojārs Grensbergs, Imants Grāvītis and Jānis Zemtautis spent many years in the Gulag camps. They survived. In 1954, a riot broke out in Jezkazan, Kazakhstan. The men’s camp and women’s camp joined together and held on for 40 days. Then came the tanks that killed more than 1,000 of them. Austra Vērpe met her future husband there. They were lucky to stay alive. The dream of the musician Zigfrīds Muktupāvels was to find the grave of his paternal uncle in far-off Kazakhstan. He was named after his uncle, who never came home. Zigfrīds and a cousin headed off into the steppes to look for a monument reading “Zigfrīds Muktupāvels.” The next round of deportations occurred in 1949, and whole families were sent to Siberia. Fathers were tried in court, a great many ended up in punitive camps in Vorkuta and Inta. Skaidrīte Jostmane and Māris Landers travelled to Vorkuta to find their father’s gravesite.
Portrait of Signe Baumane. About creative people, obsession and fixation with their work, huge egos without which nothing gets done, but alongside them are others whose lives are willingly or unwillingly subordinated... The train of alienation is picking up speed, and it seems that it is impossible to jump off without painful injuries.
The documentary "Childhood Land Siberia" continues the series of films about the deportations to Siberia, commited by the Soviet Union as part of an ethnic cleansing in its occupied lands in 1941. Some of the surviving children who were deported, now seniors, wish to visit the lands of their childhood in Siberia. They have experienced the cold and famine and have lost their families there, but it was their only childhood, with sun and snow, friends and people who helped them survive. What is it like there now? Does anyone remember them there?
Near the end of the Second World War, when it became clear that Latvia would be re-invaded by the Soviet Army, some 150,000 of its citizens fled to Germany as refugees. Among them were farmers, businessmen, government officials, intellectuals and ordinary folks who had already experienced the dreadful Year of Terror. Almost one million people from Eastern Europe sought escape from the Soviet regime. The Latvians, who became DPs (displaced persons), tried to create a “little Latvia” within the confines of the refugee camps. This film follows the fates of their children.
In the documentary, director Dzintra Geka has created an engaging portrait of Latvian painter Juris Jurjāns. The film delves into his world, embodying a visually rich narrative of freedom in art, life energy, and virtuosity. As always, Juris Jurjāns chooses beauty as the leading theme of his artist and refuses to conform to the rules dictated by old age. He continues to indulge in fine drinks, puffs cigars, and paints. Every day he travels to his studio, where he finds solace in his canvases.
A documentary historical account of the fate of four thousand children deported in 1941. Only one in ten survived and can bear witness. We have filmed 180 interviews, and the work continues.
On June 14, 1941, more than 15,000 Latvian inhabitants, including approximately 4,000 children of Latvian, Jewish, Polish and Russian ethnicity were deported to Siberia. During this period of deportation by the Soviet invaders, the men were separated from their families and sent to the Gulag. Some were sentenced to the highest punishment, death, and the rest were kept in labor camps. The women and children were sent to the remote Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk districts. The first two years were the most difficult and many perished from the harsh conditions. Today some 400 of those deported children still live in Latvia and Siberia. This documentary describes the fate of these children.
The 20th Latvian Song and Dance Festival was the first in which compatriots from all corners of the world gathered in a free Latvia, including those who had gone into exile in the West and those who had been forcibly deported to Siberia. Director Dzintra Geka also brings together those who were unable to return to their homeland – footage for the film was shot in Sweden, at the 6th European Latvian Song Festival in Norrköping, where Latvian Minister of Justice Laila Freivalde, who is of Latvian descent, marches alongside her compatriots, and in Siberia, in the village of Lejas Bulāna, where Latvian women sing "...because this is Latvia, this is Bulāna...". The older generation of Canadian Latvians also dance at the festival with the Dardedze dance group from Toronto, while Mārtiņš Brauns prepares his song Saule, Pērkons, Daugava (Sun, Thunder, Daugava) for the choir.
On June 14, 1941, 15,424 Latvians were deported from their country, including about 4,000 infants, children and adolescents. Many of the youngest died on the way, others died later from starvation, disease and over work in the Soviet camps. Some of the deported children survived and returned to Latvia, others remained in Siberia for their whole lives. Dzintra Geka's latest documentary "Road to Siberia, 1941" is an emotional account about those deportees who grew up in Siberia, far from their homeland.
Why did we travel to Siberia for 20 years? Why did we make this film? How did we see Siberia? People who were deported as children in 1949 and 1941 searched for the places where their loved ones were buried. After 2014, we were watched more closely, we were not allowed into museums, we were followed, and the people we had met were interrogated. When we found graves, we were not allowed to take out our cameras and film. And yet... we would never have believed that Russia would attack Ukraine, threaten the Baltic states and the Western world.
The 1960s brought hope for the huge Soviet empire - a hope that the regime will become more humane. The optimism and youthful energy of the decade became the prevailing mood. Renewal of life vibrated in Latvia. The newly built Riga Film Studio was a strong impulse to the development of national cinematic art. A new generation full of energy came into the Latvian film industry; they created a style of documentary cinema that we now call Riga poetic documentary cinema (or Riga style).
The 1949 deportations were one of the most tragic aspects of contemporary Latvian history. 43,000 people were deported to Siberia for life, with 10,000 infants and children, elderly people, and even people raised from their deathbed among them. 4,941 persons perished. Every fourth deportee was a child. Every sixth deportee was 60 or older.
The years 1941 and 1949 became a fateful turning point for thousands of Latvians who were taken away without warning to an unknown destination. In a foreign land and harsh conditions, they tried to preserve their humanity, create a new life, and raise their children. These children grew up far from their homeland, in a foreign environment where they felt like outsiders. They learned a foreign language, lived among strangers, and asked questions that even adults were afraid to answer. One of these children is actor Mārtiņš Vilsons, who was born in exile in the Magadan region of Russia to the family of Zenta Vilsone and Rolands Čehovičs. In this documentary, director Dzintra Geka portrays his life story as a personal testimony to the fate of the exiled Latvians, their search for identity, and their return to a contradictory reality.
The story of the secret of self-creativity, the loneliness of the soul, the meridians of con-sciousness and the scope of man. Ilmārs Blumbergs (1943-2016) is a concept in life than can be classically proven if we analyze his work in set design, poster art, painting and multimedia work. The personality of Blumbergs, however is a shifting and intangible material which ensures superior value, wonderfulness and intimacy to all that he created. Those who analyze his art and world perceptions, recognize the work as seeming to come from antiquity, but it can never be catalogued or recorded in bookkeeping. How fortunate that it also cannot be consumed.
