Sibīrijas bērni

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.

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.

An emotional, figurative and historical study of the memories of people who were deported to Siberia as children on June 14, 1941. The suffering of these victims is presented in contrast to the beautiful landscapes of Siberia. On June 14, 2009, the film crew, some of the deported children who survived and returned to Latvia, and their children, go on a pilgrimage to Siberia to install memorial plaques in memory of the mothers and children who were deported between 1941 and 1949.

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.

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 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.

Latvians have left their land for all corners of the earth over the last centuries – either driven out for disobeying the powers at large, or due to wars and revolutions, or with visions of a better life. And not always to an easier life. But there was only one place where an anti-Latvian campaign was waged, where every Latvian was treated as a spy, a traitor, and the enemy, and therefore deserved to be tortured and shot. This was during the 1937 repression in Russia, where the horror and pathologies, made Latvians into betrayers and murderers of their own kind.

A documentary about Miķelis Lisments - a controversial director of fishermen kolkhoz "Banga" in Roja, a village in North-West Latvia.

In 1941 almost 4,000 children under the age of 16 were deported from Latvia to Siberia. Some returned to Latvia, many perished, and many were left in exile, where they had their own children. Nadežda Āriņa and Anatolijs Taurenis were born in the 1950s in permanently frozen Igarka in Siberia. Their mothers had been childhood friends in Latvia before their deportation. Nadja returned to Latvia where she now sells souvenirs, but for Taurenis Latvia is still a dream. In 2007, Nadežda heads to Igarka to visit Taurenis.

A documentary about Latvian freedom fighter Konstantīns Čakste who was the son of the first Latvian president and who perished in 1945.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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?