Directing
Aivars Freimanis was a prominent Latvian film director and writer.
At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.
Documentarian Aivars Feimanis lived on the Liv Coast, in Melnsils. It's home to Latvia’s ancient indigenous Livs - a small Finno-Ugric people of the North Kurzeme coast, who preserve their unique folklore and traditions to this day. This film is about them.
Two people fall in love. A film that started as a documentary.
A homage to Krišjānis Barons and his life's work – to collect and catalogue Latvian folksongs or dainas,thus creating the encyclopaedia of Latvian life, a poetic reflection of the knowledge of life accumulated over the centuries. The film is based on Krišjānis Barons' life during late 1800s and early 1900s – his childhood and youth in Latvia, studies and work in St. Petersburg and other places in Russia, his relationship with his faithful wife Dārta, and the awakening of the Latvian self-awareness.
Latvia, late 19th century. Farm-hand boy Jancis lives on a homestead with his mother, grandfather and grandmother. His world does not reach beyond the horizon, and life progresses according to the seasonal cycle – from winter through spring, summer and autumn to the next St. George's Day when farmhands often had to move to the next farm.
A poetic documentary observation of everyday life in a Latvian fishing village, where centuries-old traditions and wind-hardened men and women live alongside the optimism of new construction and the smiling faces of the new generation.
A Latvian poetic documentary about the town Kuldīga.