Baltic Sea Forum and Screenings 2011 

This so-called industry meeting, organised by National Film Centre of Latvia with the support of the EUMEDIA programme, has a very important public addition, a film programme of very high quality, entitled ”Daring Minds”:

A couple of the films have been reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk – ”Steam of Life” from Finland and ”Regretters” from Sweden. Others that have been seen by this blogger are the shocking investigative ”Give us Tomorrow” by Michael Colling and Marty Syjuco, a Shakespearean drama about an innocent man trialed and condemned for murder in a totally corrupt Philippene society - and Estonian Marianna Kaat’s human story ”Pit no.8” from an Ukrainian mining environment, where children work illegally. Also to watch is the Irish ”The Pipe”, a classic David-Goliath story (director Risteard O Domhnaill) about Irish farmers and fisherman, who rise up in protest when Shell tries to build a pipeline for natural gas through their county. Russian Alina Rudnitskaya proves again her big talent with “I will forget this Day”, a cinematically beautiful short film about young women waiting to have an abortion performed. Equally talented is local Kaspars Goba, whose “homo@lv” premiered at the Berlinale this year. This is a clip of the presentation text of the film:

“In the summer of 2005 two guys came up with the idea to organize an unprecedented event – a festive lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people’s parade through the streets of Riga, the capital of Latvia. Little did they know that their good intent would spiral into a chain of inconceivable events lasting several years: the great emotion stirred up would dramatically divide Latvian society; the persons involved would be showered, in turn, with human excrement and holy water, families would be torn apart, jobs lost, and a pastor expelled from the church for free thinking.”

Two more films will be shown – and reported on by filmkommentaren.dk: Cyril Tuschi’s “Khodorkovsky” (photo) and Banksy’s “Exit through the Gift Shop”.

http://www.mediadesklatvia.eu/baltic-sea-forum-for-documentaries-2011/

Tue Steen Müller    http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1718/