Baltic Sea Forum: New Talent/1
The Baltic Sea Forum 2010 was very much a place for new talent to present their ideas at the same time as it was refreshing to see an old master like Ivars Seleckis, in this mid seventies, come forward with his proposal for a sequel to the two previous documentaries from Skersiela, the Crossroad Street in Riga. See below.
Davis Simanis brings something new to Latvian documentary. His film about the setting up of Wagner’s Valkyrie proved already the playfulness of the director, who is also an editor. Together with Gints Grube, who for many years worked in television but now comes out as a very skilled documentarian, Simanis has made a film, ”Sounds under the Sun”, that has its international premiere at the upcoming DOKLeipzig. And finally, the Forum saw Simanis launch his new project, ”Born in Riga”, which is a story about two geniuses who went each their own way: Isaiah Berlin and Sergey Eisenstein. They met in Albert Street in 1914 and in St. Petersburg in 1945. Simanis wants to tell their stories in a kind of film noir style where he creates/reenacts the non-existing archives!
From Lithuania two female directors with the same first name, Giedre, brought forward their proposals with a strong proof that in Lithuania they spell film with a capital F. Giedre Beinoriute (photo from her previous film Vulkanovka) had a wonderful clip with children talking about existential questions: She had – contrary to many documentary directors today – a clear idea of narrative style wanting to film the kids on an empty background with two cameras building the story as an essay. Giedre Zickyte presented a powerful clip on the late Lithuanian photographer Luckus, who killed a man and himself in 1987, being more or less banned from his own country. His widow, lifving in the US, has opened the archive for the director to tell the touching story of their life and giving evidence of the bohemian artist scene in Moscow in the USSR in the 60’es and 70’es.
