20th Arsenāls - Riga International Film Forum
September 17 - 26, 2010
Riga / Latvia
Established in 1986, Arsenāls takes place every second autumn, presenting both international festival hits and the latest in Baltic cinema (features, documentaries, animated films), as well as retrospectives and special programmes.
Programme sections of the 20th Arsenals: International Film Competition / Baltic Film Competition / The Tales of the Bleeding Sun / Evening Films / Special Screenings
International Film Competition:
MUM DIED ON SATURDAY IN THE KITCHEN
Ukraine 2009, 52 min
Director: Maxym Vasyanovich
Script: Maxym Vasyanovich
Cinematography: Sergiy Stretsenko, Vadim Iljkov, Andriy Ljitsetsiy
Maksym Vasyanovich (Ukraine, 1983) studied film and theatre directing at the National Theatre University in Kiev. His latest film is an autobiographical story dedicated to his father. Ever since he was a little boy, Maksym’s father dreamed about carrier in classical music, he wanted to conduct a symphonic orchestra. Nonetheless, if one wants to be a successful musician he can forget about his private life. Father chose a different path and stayed with his family to bring up his son.
Baltic Film Competition:
Disco & Atomic War
Disko ja tuumasõda, Estonia, 2009, 80 min, ?, Beta, DVD, HD, Archive , Creative, History, Personal view
Disco and Atomic War tells the story of a strange kind of information war in which a totalitarian regime stands face to face with the heroes of popular culture. And loses. Western popular culture had an incomparable role shaping Soviet children's worldviews in those days - in ways that now seem slightly odd. Finnish television was a window to a world of dreams that the authorities could not block in any way. Though Finnish channels were banned, many households found some way to access the forbidden fruit. Disco and Atomic War offers its own version of recent history, mixing spy games into a human tragicomedy.
ESTONIAN STORIES. WORLD CHAMPION
Estonia, 2009, 38 min
Director: Moonika Siimets
Producer: Aivo Spitsonok, Mari Kallas
Production company: Osakond
83-year old Herbert Sepp was schooled during first Republic of Estonia, he was taken to Siberia as a young boy and he returned, but there the common grounds with his contemporaries end. Herbert stands on his head, does handsprings and he is the best Estonian senior sportsman in pole-vault in his age group. Herbert’s achievements already include a silver medal from European Championships. But, Finland is preparing to host World Senior Championship games and his dream is to place his name next to a World Champion title and break the world record in pole-vault.
Family Instinct
Ģimenes lietas, Latvia, 2010, 52 min, Digi Beta, DVD, HD, Drama doc, Personal view, Portrait, Social issues
Family Instinct is a film about incest - an illegal act, social taboo and a violation of religious norms. Zanda is a 28-year-old woman, worn out by hard work. Surrounded by poverty and despair, she is trying to survive with her two children in a god-forsaken Latvian village. Her hardships can be traced back to living in a relationship with her brother Valdis. When Valdis is put in jail, the local community forces her to make a difficult choice: to stay with him or with her children. Despite her ill fortune, she manages to express her love for the children, still hoping to save her family. The film offers a tragicomic but highly authentic insight into the bleak reality of Latvian countryside today.
HOW ARE YOU, RUDOLF MING?
Latvia 2010, 62 min
Director: Roberts Rubīns
Script: Jānis Kalve
Cinematography: Uldis Jancis
Sound: Ilvars Veģis
Rudolf is a 13 year-old boy who is obsessed with making drawn films. He is a young man of varied attainments who has several amusing hobbies such as constructing traps and collecting film posters. The documentary reveals the conflict between the imaginary world of the boy and the certain rules of society.
THE OLYMPIC MAN
Latvia 2009, 80 min
Director: Viesturs Kairišs
Script: Viesturs Kairišs
Cinematography: Gints Bērziņš, Andrejs Verhoustinskis
Sound: Aleksandrs Vaicahovskis, Normunds Kļaviņš
The portrayal of Mārtiņš Rubenis, the Latvian luger and the Olympic medal winner – in 2006 in Turin the athlete won the first Winter Olympics medal in Latvian history. By contrast, in today’s cultural circles, he is also known as Dj Betons from Varka Kru. Like a medieval knight Lohengrin, Rubenis goes to the track to fight against the rivals, time, the world and himself.
River
Upė, Lithuania, 2009, 30 min, Beta SP
Documentary filmmakers Julija Gruodienė and Rimantas Gruodis introduce us to a remote village somewhere in Lithuania separated from the surrounding world by a river. The local folk are thus forced every day to ferry their way to the opposite bank and then trudge the long journey to the nearest town. This mostly affects school-aged kids, however; local unemployed men need only make the trip once a week to stock up on vodka. Via eloquent, visually striking footage and the villagers’ humorous commentary, the directors acquaint us with a local way of life whose rhythm is set by a river. (KVIFF 2010)
TRAIN STOPS FOR FIVE MINUTES
Lithuania, 2009, 57 min
Director: Janina Lapinskaite
Script: Janina Lapinskaite
Cinematography: Vytas Plytnikas, Algimantas Mikutenas
Music: Indre Stakvile
A huge stone on the Station Square of some Siberian town reminds the days when trains stopped here for a long time to let out thousands of people. There was nothing more than a broad, empty field. Now, in the place where people have built houses and brought up their children, the train stops only for five minutes. This life in a provincial town N which seems so normal to the viewer conceals quite extraordinary dreams, memories, insights and losses.
Valkyrie Limited
Valkyrie Limited, Latvia, 2009, 52 min, Beta SP, Digi Beta, Art and Culture, Music
Love, hate, power and greed are just a small spectrum of human characteristics encoded in Richard Wagner's The Valkyrie. It is universal opera and therefore creates a massive challenge to an artist's imagination. Valkyrie Limited is an investigation of the director's mentality into and beyond the reality of staging the Valkyrie at the Latvian National Opera. Taking the Valkyrie phenomenon to an abstract level, the film seeks the fragile link between a pragmatically constructed performance and the world of the unconscious that lies within the music and the narrative.
Special Screenings:
Blind Loves
Slepé lásky, Slovak Republic, 2008, 77 min, 35 mm, Creative, Health, Human Rights, IDF video library
It is very often difficult for us, those who can see, to find our true fulfillment and happiness in the world. The more complicated, but maybe the more interesting this journey might be for the blind. Their perspective of the world is much more essential and sincere in many ways, and it often uncovers the invisible dimensions of the world. This film is about love amongst the blind and about the different forms it can take. The main protagonists are people who were born blind and they have been living in a world of their own since ever. This world is often filled with unusual visions, perceptions and dreams. It is through the lives of four different characters in the film, through which we are presented different kinds of love experience. Zuzka, a blind teenager, is in search of her first love. Blind young Roma, Miro, falls in love with a blind white girl. Blind Elena happily raises her 5-year-old sighted daughter. Peter, a blind music teacher, wants to fulfill his wife’s dream and takes her to ‚see‘ the sea for the first time in their life. The cinematography we intend to apply should be artistic and visiualy attractive in the surrealistic aesthetics but at the same time its content will consist of real and true moments from the lives of the characters. The screenplay was awarded the Tibor Vichta Award for the best documentary script in Slovakia.
Contact:
Arsenals
International Centre of Cinema
Mārstaļu street 14, LV 1050
Riga, Latvia
+371 672 101 14
http://arsenals.lv