Latvian Academy of Culture Masterclass

I was invited by Davis Simanis Jr. to come to Riga to teach documentary for a week at the new premises of the Academy of Culture, where Davis, a prominent fiction and documentary director, has signed a contract of four years to be the Rector of the Academy that (Wikipedia) is “a higher education establishment in Latvia offering various bachelor’s, magister and doctoral degree programmes on cultural subjects. The academy was founded in 1990.” The new place includes several buildings and is said to have been the factory of the cigarette company Prince… Danish.

Davis – see photo, to the right – took me and producer Uldis Cekulis (left) around and proudly we were on the rooftop, fifth floor, perfect for summer receptions.

I had 13 students for the five days, some were there all the time, others had to leave some times as they had work to do in the industry. I managed to have one hour meeting with all the them to know a bit more about them and to hear which project they are working on as part of their study – they have to finish a short documentary. The themes were many, portraits of course, a child with autism, a family, “do you want to have children or not”, death, city transport, immigrants doing Wolt or Bolt, jobs that Latvians don’t want to touch and the scout movement in the country during and after Soviet Union.

And I showed them clips and full films – started with “Bridges of Time” to tell the students about Herz Frank and Uldis Brauns, the intellectual filmmaker and the poetic filmmaker. They were already pretty much – from their Master’s Programme – informed about the Direct Cinema and Vérité, so I skipped the wonderful film that legendary Peter Wintonick made about the latter, with stars like Richard Leacock, Maysles and Pennebaker.

Historically Latvian documentary is strong. I mentioned Herz Frank and Uldis Brauns, I have written about Juris Podnieks and – still alive – the masters Ivars Seleckis, and Ivars Zviedris, and with producers like Guntis Trekteris and Uldis Cekulis, new talents will get their chance to develop projects. Not to forget, Latvia has its National Film Centre that functions well giving money for production and taking care of sending films to international festivals.

Thanks for the invitation Davis Simanis, hope the students got some inspiration.

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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