- Occupation
Producer, Director - Country
Latvia
Pipars Romualds
Actor's Solo
The film portrais one of the most popular actors in Latvia today Yakov Rafalson. He came to Latvia in 1991 full of enthusiasm to turn a new page. For the years of his career in Riga Russian Drama, he was twice awarded as the best dramatic actor of the year.
For All My Life
The film tells about the life of a Gypsy community living in a small Latvian town of Sabile. The life of those people could have been annihilated in its germ...
We are
The film`s protagonist Janis Voitkans, a scientist of Riga Technical University, the Faculty of Power Engineering, works in the field of diminution of losses in energy providing. His research invention could contribute to the solving of many problems of saving and expedient use of power recources not only in Latvia but also in the rest of the world.
Double Portrait of a Coin
Using previously unpublished amateur footage shot in the era of 8mm cameras, the film reveals unseen thesaurus of cultural history. For the first time - Latvian film folklore on screen! Film is about the simple human life - love, hopes and dreams - of our parents, the generation that lived in the Soviet Latvia when a double-moral ruled the society. The material for the film is a message in a bottle thrown on the coast of the today's life. Such a bottle got to our studio a couple of months ago. A lady brought a 8mm reel of her family chronicles filmed by her late husband about twenty years ago. 'Could you restore the footage and write it on a VHS?', she asked. It seemed that it would be nothing exciting in the old family footage, shot by a non-professional. Yet when we opened the box we saw the Life, half-forgotten, but still very real and authentic. Our intention is to make a film about the simple human life of the generations who were destined to live in the Soviet Latvia, which existed from 1949 till 1991. That was the time when Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union, the state where a double-moral reigned: the official moral and the life moral of simple people. The latter was very similar to the life moral of people in free and democratic world. People loved, hoped, dreamt and built the life of their own. The fibre of the film will be made of amateur materials shot by 8mm cameras. This was the most popular format among non-professionals in the Soviet Union, equivalent to the modern home video. Thus through the eyes of those people we will see how they worked, spent their holidays, travelled in Latvia and in other republics of the big Soviet Union, we will see their joys and hobbies, their family traditions, babies making their first steps, young people with bunches of flowers on their last school day, and what is especially interesting we will see the official holidays and celebrations from the inside, i.e. what simple people were doing when theoretically they had to be on demonstrations. And we will see that the generation was happy in it own way, though it was divided from the other world by the iron cage. What a pride is seen in the eyes of a boy who is holding in his hands the first portable radio Spidola produced in Latvia! And how carefully the first personal automobile (personal!), an old Moskvitch is being cleaned, wiped and sponged. Only a few people could buy a car in the 50s-70s. This episode crushes the myth that Soviet people were devoid of proprietor's feeling. However the amateur footage will not be enough to convey the atmosphere of those years. It should always be remembered that every coin has two sides. Thus the 8mm materials will be set off against pieces from the official newsreels of that time. The difference will be obvious. The film is going to be a of hymn to human life which is above political regimes and ideologies.
The Secrets of the Pyramid of Djoser
Latvian scientists - archaeologists, photogrammetry and radar specialists, geologists, historians, computer programmers and others - banded together to create a unique technology for exploring archaeological sites, and made a sensational find in 2007. In the oldest stone building in the world - Egypt's Pyramid of Djoser - the Latvian scientific expedition discovered new underground rooms and a network of galleries. This new information has forced a revaluation of previous assumptions about the role and function of pyramids.
Stand up, Teacher!
The film is part of the society integration project "Multicultural education: teacher, pupil, family". They are outcasts of the fate. Society knows very little or nothing about their existence. They have a common name – children with prolonged health problems. They are not to be found in hospitals, but at homes, whatever they are like. In most cases, for several years, the only contact with the society and the world outside for these children is a teacher, appointed by the local municipality, who visits and teaches them at home. In the cities, there are several hundred of such unfortunate girls and boys. It might seem to be a medical problem, but, if we take a camera and follow the home study teacher around, we will see surprising things. Most of these children are the victims of social problems. Their physical and mental diseases are direct consequences of dysfunctional families, national and global problems. The principal concern of the invalid children is: how to keep up with the pace of life, and afterwards, how to return and integrate in the highly dynamic society of their peers. How can Muslim, Jewish, Russian children integrate in the ethnic fabric of this country from the solitude of their homes? How are they going to feel a few years later, when they leave their homes and see a different Latvia, a Latvia of the European Union – a multilingual country, where everyone must speak at least three languages, where one is supposed to be open-minded and able to communicate? Will the teacher, by teaching Latvian and English, single-handedly be able to prepare the children for full integration into the society? Who else will reach out to them on the brink of "the real life"? The course of the empirical pilot study. The aims of the empirical pilot study: to find out what are the understandings and knowledge of the teachers and students about the intercultural education. The methods of the empirical pilot study: The two mass scale surveys were used as the data acquisition methods: the interview and the questionnaire; the Descriptive statistics were used as the data processing and analysis methods of the study. During the empirical pilot study the authors of came to the following conclusions: o The university faculty and students are informed about the intercultural education; o The intercultural education is considered to be necessary; o The implementation of intercultural education is problematic; o The lack of intercultural competence, the lack of systematic knowledge on intercultural education hinders effective work in the multicultural classes (groups); Most of the respondents have been involved in cultural conflicts (for example, in conflicts related to ethnic belonging, social status, etc.).
Treading the Pharaoh's Dust
For the first time in the history of the world’s culture heritage preservation a Latvian scientific expedition is exploring thousands-year-old Karnaka temple in Egypt by using the most up-to-date technique: the three-dimension laser scanning. The new method will forward the temple’s exploration and will make it possible to restore precisely the destroyed parts of it. The expedition’s leader and the author of the new exploration method is Bruno Deslandes, a Frenchman from Marseilles, the scanning operator is Klaus Kipsch from Germany, and the total station operator is Maris Kalinka from Latvia. The documentary shows the everyday work of the expedition. The film’s location is Egypt (Karnaka temples, Luxor, the Nile banks, the old town of Cairo) and Latvia (the Museum of Arts, old Riga).
The film portrais one of the most popular actors in Latvia today Yakov Rafalson. He came to Latvia in 1991 full of enthusiasm to turn a new page. For the years of his career in Riga Russian Drama, he was twice awarded as the best dramatic actor of the year.
For All My Life
The film tells about the life of a Gypsy community living in a small Latvian town of Sabile. The life of those people could have been annihilated in its germ...
We are
The film`s protagonist Janis Voitkans, a scientist of Riga Technical University, the Faculty of Power Engineering, works in the field of diminution of losses in energy providing. His research invention could contribute to the solving of many problems of saving and expedient use of power recources not only in Latvia but also in the rest of the world.
Double Portrait of a Coin
Using previously unpublished amateur footage shot in the era of 8mm cameras, the film reveals unseen thesaurus of cultural history. For the first time - Latvian film folklore on screen! Film is about the simple human life - love, hopes and dreams - of our parents, the generation that lived in the Soviet Latvia when a double-moral ruled the society. The material for the film is a message in a bottle thrown on the coast of the today's life. Such a bottle got to our studio a couple of months ago. A lady brought a 8mm reel of her family chronicles filmed by her late husband about twenty years ago. 'Could you restore the footage and write it on a VHS?', she asked. It seemed that it would be nothing exciting in the old family footage, shot by a non-professional. Yet when we opened the box we saw the Life, half-forgotten, but still very real and authentic. Our intention is to make a film about the simple human life of the generations who were destined to live in the Soviet Latvia, which existed from 1949 till 1991. That was the time when Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union, the state where a double-moral reigned: the official moral and the life moral of simple people. The latter was very similar to the life moral of people in free and democratic world. People loved, hoped, dreamt and built the life of their own. The fibre of the film will be made of amateur materials shot by 8mm cameras. This was the most popular format among non-professionals in the Soviet Union, equivalent to the modern home video. Thus through the eyes of those people we will see how they worked, spent their holidays, travelled in Latvia and in other republics of the big Soviet Union, we will see their joys and hobbies, their family traditions, babies making their first steps, young people with bunches of flowers on their last school day, and what is especially interesting we will see the official holidays and celebrations from the inside, i.e. what simple people were doing when theoretically they had to be on demonstrations. And we will see that the generation was happy in it own way, though it was divided from the other world by the iron cage. What a pride is seen in the eyes of a boy who is holding in his hands the first portable radio Spidola produced in Latvia! And how carefully the first personal automobile (personal!), an old Moskvitch is being cleaned, wiped and sponged. Only a few people could buy a car in the 50s-70s. This episode crushes the myth that Soviet people were devoid of proprietor's feeling. However the amateur footage will not be enough to convey the atmosphere of those years. It should always be remembered that every coin has two sides. Thus the 8mm materials will be set off against pieces from the official newsreels of that time. The difference will be obvious. The film is going to be a of hymn to human life which is above political regimes and ideologies.
The Secrets of the Pyramid of Djoser
Latvian scientists - archaeologists, photogrammetry and radar specialists, geologists, historians, computer programmers and others - banded together to create a unique technology for exploring archaeological sites, and made a sensational find in 2007. In the oldest stone building in the world - Egypt's Pyramid of Djoser - the Latvian scientific expedition discovered new underground rooms and a network of galleries. This new information has forced a revaluation of previous assumptions about the role and function of pyramids.
Stand up, Teacher!
The film is part of the society integration project "Multicultural education: teacher, pupil, family". They are outcasts of the fate. Society knows very little or nothing about their existence. They have a common name – children with prolonged health problems. They are not to be found in hospitals, but at homes, whatever they are like. In most cases, for several years, the only contact with the society and the world outside for these children is a teacher, appointed by the local municipality, who visits and teaches them at home. In the cities, there are several hundred of such unfortunate girls and boys. It might seem to be a medical problem, but, if we take a camera and follow the home study teacher around, we will see surprising things. Most of these children are the victims of social problems. Their physical and mental diseases are direct consequences of dysfunctional families, national and global problems. The principal concern of the invalid children is: how to keep up with the pace of life, and afterwards, how to return and integrate in the highly dynamic society of their peers. How can Muslim, Jewish, Russian children integrate in the ethnic fabric of this country from the solitude of their homes? How are they going to feel a few years later, when they leave their homes and see a different Latvia, a Latvia of the European Union – a multilingual country, where everyone must speak at least three languages, where one is supposed to be open-minded and able to communicate? Will the teacher, by teaching Latvian and English, single-handedly be able to prepare the children for full integration into the society? Who else will reach out to them on the brink of "the real life"? The course of the empirical pilot study. The aims of the empirical pilot study: to find out what are the understandings and knowledge of the teachers and students about the intercultural education. The methods of the empirical pilot study: The two mass scale surveys were used as the data acquisition methods: the interview and the questionnaire; the Descriptive statistics were used as the data processing and analysis methods of the study. During the empirical pilot study the authors of came to the following conclusions: o The university faculty and students are informed about the intercultural education; o The intercultural education is considered to be necessary; o The implementation of intercultural education is problematic; o The lack of intercultural competence, the lack of systematic knowledge on intercultural education hinders effective work in the multicultural classes (groups); Most of the respondents have been involved in cultural conflicts (for example, in conflicts related to ethnic belonging, social status, etc.).
Treading the Pharaoh's Dust
For the first time in the history of the world’s culture heritage preservation a Latvian scientific expedition is exploring thousands-year-old Karnaka temple in Egypt by using the most up-to-date technique: the three-dimension laser scanning. The new method will forward the temple’s exploration and will make it possible to restore precisely the destroyed parts of it. The expedition’s leader and the author of the new exploration method is Bruno Deslandes, a Frenchman from Marseilles, the scanning operator is Klaus Kipsch from Germany, and the total station operator is Maris Kalinka from Latvia. The documentary shows the everyday work of the expedition. The film’s location is Egypt (Karnaka temples, Luxor, the Nile banks, the old town of Cairo) and Latvia (the Museum of Arts, old Riga).
Born in 1952 in Daugavpils. Graduated from Latvia State University (1971-1976). Film director, cameraman, scriptwriter and producer for more than 100 pieces of films at Riga Documentary Film Studio, GILDE film studio, Latvia State Television and other film studios. Member of the Latvian Filmmakers Union, founder of the Latvian Film Producers Association, managing director of the Gilde Film Studio.
Gilde Film Studio
Amatu iela 5
LV-1941 Riga
Amatu iela 5
LV-1941 Riga