Screen Vision

Choosing the fate of a rock musician was similar to being a dissident. From the 60s, the Soviet Union tried to discourage and restrict the expansion of rock music by any means. They called it the “rotten fruit of degraded capitalism, demoralizing the minds of Soviet youth”. Despite that, rock music broke the wall – made a hole in the Iron Curtain – and gained the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of young people.Rock musicians were on the frontline of the rebellion against the Soviet regime. Despite censorship, they managed to deliver, in a hidden, roundabout way through lyrics and music, the spirit of nonconformity and freedom of choice to their audience. A film about Latvian and Soviet rock pioneers, their lives and destinies.

Aleksander Laime, romanticist and dreamer at heart, went deep into the jungle of Venezuela in search of Jimmy Angel’s famed ‘Diamond River’. While it was never publicized if he succeeded in his search, residents of Canaima still refer to him as their ancestors once named him – ‘The King of Diamonds’. Through gaining trust, Laime was to see something no other man had ever seen, but was forbidden from entering the place ever again.

This is the extraordinary story of the life of a white man – a tiger hunter in Brazil whose fame reached even as far as Hollywood. Was glory his aim and adventurousness - his means to reach it? Or was the jungle simply the perfect environment for this man of steely character and with a fighter’s gene to evolve in?

Ingus is a man around forty, utterly happy with his bachelor life, until one day chatty Žanete moves in next door and upsets the usual course of things. He might, of course, ignore her, but some overwhelming force makes him act differently.

One night, Matiss Zelcs, an employee of the Latvian national archive in Riga, notices a woman on a bridge. After passing by her without preventing her suicidal fall into the depths, a sensation of failure and guilt changes his life. He cannot forget her. Driven by a feeling of remorse and the fever of illusion, he roams through the city night and day looking for traces of her existence. This journey through the tumult of his conscience leads him deeper into his own loneliness and the depths of his soul, as he gets more and more entangled in the destinies of the woman and of the people who were attached to her. He finds himself confronted with the pain of yearning and guilt, the cruelty of love and desire, and the search for forgiveness, release and salvation.

The relationships between two people are never easy. Especially when complicated by their professions. We are used to think that profession or occupation puts a stamp or a mask on peoples' personality. He is a pastor, she is a prostitute. Everything's clear. But underneath he is a man, she is a woman. Simple and difficult in the same time. Short film "Scortum" tells the story of the mazy relationships between sin and happiness which can never be solved.

Once you stand still, things will come up to you. (Gottfried Benn) Using tableau-like takes of different places of the Muscovite suburb (Moskatchka), a poor quarter of the Latvian capital Riga, the film shows fragments of the choreography of life and combines them to form a picture of reality. Without making any comments, the camera observes the people’s behaviour, which reminds you of the early Flaherty and how his camera “stuck to” his film heroes . It also reminds you of the beginning of film art when the recording of reality on a strip of film was an event, in spite of its accidental character.