Sibīrijas bērni

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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 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.

Every year on June 14, the Siberian Children Foundation goes on a trip to Siberia to remember their loved ones who stayed there. Along with the trips, they've made documentaries and held conferences. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the foundation's activities. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, no in-person activities were planned this year, but a documentary film entitled "Children of Siberia. We Remember," which depicts the gatherings of those deported to Siberia in 1941, reflects archival material from previously filmed movies, and reveals the most vivid moments from legendary expeditions over the course of 20 years.

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.

John Dored was the first Latvian cinematographer to train with the famous Pathé, actively film on the front lines of WWI, and the only foreigner who filmed Lenin’s funeral, illegally. After emigrating to the U.S.A. he worked as a correspondent for Paramount News for 25 years and continued reporting from war zones. The film is based on the correspondence and journals of Dored and his wife Elizabeth – a portrait of a stellar career and of fate, love, life and death.

The film is a reflection of the Latvian people in the year of the country's centenary – viewers will easily recognize themselves and their personal stories in its scenes. Starting on New Year's Eve, January 1, when the first centenary baby, little Jete, arrives in the world to the sound of fireworks, and ending with piano music playing over a snow-covered and sunlit panorama of Latvia, the film captures the lives of hundreds of people. In addition, by filming each of the 365 days, sometimes with several cameras, and observing the processes of nature, in the countryside and in urban environments, in the lives of individuals, families and society, the cameramen have vividly captured the different facets of this story through the lens of the camera: the beautiful, the bitter, the grand, the meaningless, the comical and the absurd.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.