Publicity photo
Zane Balčus, “Culture Marks”, JSC “Latvijas Mediji”
The Baltic Sea Documentary Film Forum, like almost any international cultural event, has had to adapt to current conditions. This 24th forum will take place from 1 to 6 September, mostly digitally, with small elements of presence.
Film festivals, markets and industry events have been creating and looking for new solutions for the event format since the second half of March. Only rarely did any of them happen at all – and if they didn’t, they did present themselves in some format. For example, one of the most anticipated events of the year, the Cannes International Film Festival, announced the selection of films submitted to the festival this year. Although they were not shown in Cannes, the films were given the festival’s brand name, thus giving at least a partial recognition to the physical participation of these films in the physical festival.
Adapting to the conditions of gatherings and travel restrictions has also been a challenge for the Baltic Sea Documentary Film Forum this year. Although the film program created by the forum is widely heard in the local media every year, the forum is internationally associated with the environment of the documentary film industry.
Representatives of upcoming documentary film projects in Riga present their ideas to experts from various television stations (BBC, NHK, Poland, Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, the Baltic States, etc.) and film rights and distribution companies or film foundations.
For presentations, projects are prepared by an international team of lecturers so that the presentations are so engaging that experts (or buyers) are ready to invest money in the projects.
Compared to other events, the Riga Forum is small and compact, so it is very pleasant for many – ten other parallel activities do not take place here at the same time, and both project representatives and experts can devote time to this task, establish far-reaching contacts and create cooperation between project representatives.
Riga is a place to get acquainted, not just to greet and skilfully on the way to the next meeting, which is marked in the planner. How and whether it will be possible in this year’s digital form – will have to be assessed after the end of the forum.
The moderators of the event, documentary film consultants from Denmark Tue Stan Miller and Mikael Opstrups will lead the presentation from Riga, and Baltic project participants are also invited to represent their projects in person (this year two projects from Lithuania and Estonia, four from Latvia and one project, in which the Latvian representative participates as a co-producer).
Unlike other years, when the forum presentations were open to visitors, this time they will be held in a very narrow circle, in the presence of participants and representatives of the Baltic film industry, but their online broadcast will be available to accredited participants.
The whole training process has also been transferred to the digital environment, as well as its format has changed as a result. Much of the training will take the form of one-on-one consultations with teachers such as Lithuanian director Audrjus Stonis, Georgian director Nino Ordzhonikidze, Syrian producer Diana El Jerudi and others.
The screening of the film program will also experience a new format. The main home of the forum in Riga is the cinema “K.Suns”, but this year only two screenings will take place on the big screen – the opening of the forum program “K.Suns” (September 1) and an open-air screening in Spīķeri quarter (September 5).
These could be called special events in parallel with the basic program, which will be shown on the portal www.filmas.lv from September 1 to 6, each film being shown twice at certain screening times.
Although the authors of these films will not visit Latvia, as they would be in face-to-face format, after several screenings there will be recorded interviews with their creators or a traditional discussion on a topic – this year about anorexia after the Norwegian film Self-Portrait (2020).
One of the talks will be with the director of the film chosen for the opening of the program, Rada Čorničuk, who has addressed the visitors of an extremely large number of festivals with her debut work “Home” and continues to do so.
As a journalist, Radu has established the first independent media organization in Romania, which, together with other journalists, conducts long-term and in-depth research on various topics. He is interested in human rights, the environment, animal rights – and some of them are also in the film Home (2020).
This is a work done during the longest observation period, in which Radu has been with the Enake family, who live in a nature park near Bucharest.
Their lives are in accordance with nature and the order established in the family, but external (or modern societal standards) factors prevent them from continuing – social services force children to be sent to school, city management wants to get rid of residents to make the park accessible to the public. The film offers a view, but the answers and evaluation are in the hands of the viewer.
Danish director Eva Mulvad’s film “The Forbidden Child” (2019) has also been made for a long time, telling the story of refugees from Iran – who have chosen this step because they want to be together as a family with their illegitimate son, who would never be possible in Iran.
The authors of both the film program and the upcoming projects present different approaches to topics, current processes in society, filming techniques, with the help of which we see the developments around us, perhaps from a slightly different prism.
