The connection through time and the artist’s reflection, not topicality, is the most valuable legacy of the documentary, says director Paul Ķesteris. His film “Transfer” is one of the films of this year’s LTV documentary film project “Latvian Code”, which is united by the key word “change”.
The Līgatne ferry crosses the Gauja from early spring to autumn for locals, tourists, accidental passers-by and cars. The era of 12 wooden ferries reveals an era – tourists, locals, cars, animals, movers, habits, everyday life, traditions, holidays, unexpected events, cyclical nature. Life on a small ferry allows you to capture time. The story of one calendar year’s film traces life on a ferry in a remote part of Latvia, revealing it as a story about 21st century Latvia.
Mara Uzuliņa: Maybe I’m wrong, but when watching the film, I didn’t lose the feeling that this unique place for you personally – Līgatne ferry, the only ferry of its kind in the Baltics – is really extremely important.
Paul ChesterA: I don’t emphasize it anywhere, although it may be felt or seen in the film. Our family farmhouse is located next to this ferry. I remember my childhood, I was here as a teenager and I have carried it myself when I am allowed to carry someone. And the ferry is literally part of that childhood awareness in childhood, in the recent past, and in the future. And that is probably why I treat it with such reverence.
What I was trying to achieve in the film is to show the place as a timeless phenomenon.
Because really, basically she hasn’t changed, I don’t know, in the last 30 years. Not upgraded. It is a place where modernization and civilization would not benefit in any way. No progress would be good there. Everything is fine there, there is nothing to do there.
Remember what was your first ferry ride across the Gauja?
As a child, traveling by ferry across the river has always been like an adventure. This journey has always been something very, very special. Technically, their ferry is really pulled by a current, you may have to help with a rope, but the current itself drives that ferry from one shore to the other. This means that for three or four or five minutes while you cross, you merge into energy and inert with the energy of nature. That means you’re in that stream, she’s carrying you. It is pure physics. It is not like a ship with a propeller or a boat we are rowing. And maybe that’s what makes it feel special. Of course, there is also the environment – Gauja ancient valley and Līgatne nature park. I really think that its energy, the fusion of human and natural energy at one particular point on those few minutes, is what I feel most important when we cross.
Filming took place all season when the ferry is running?
The ferry operates all year round, but we did not succeed with last winter, because there was no such winter. It snowed once or twice, we weren’t there, and it would snow during the day. Until the river freezes and even if ice forms, he is broken to run the ferry, but he works all year round, and we were there all those seasons.
Did you count the number of times you crossed the river during the filming?
We can probably count it in the footage. I would say that 500 times maybe it could be.
What does this place mean for locals? Is it also such an everyday vehicle?
Yes, to cross to the other shore… Well, for example, cook Dreibants lives near my country house, and he goes to his restaurant “Zeit” in Līgatne. People go to work. The aunt of the lines, who is also in the movie, such a lady, she takes the cottage cheese to the city every week to sell it. It is a real transport, you can find out some current events, and it is a place… If a bridge were built there, it would be useless. If you can drive in over 30 seconds or three minutes, it’s not a huge benefit.
But if I built a bridge, it seems to me that this communication, the communication between people, would be lost, and the bridge would also leave some ecological consequences for that place.
The existing ferry is probably the greenest way it can be.
Documentary cinema most often tries to portray a personality or emphasize a social problem, but you have chosen to follow this unusual path and tell about one seemingly insignificant ferry. How did you come up with the idea that you have to make a movie about this place, that there is material there?
I would not say that this is my dedication to the ferry or Līgatne, because as soon as Harald Vecvagars (the film’s editor) went to the ferry to film, after the first day of filming we realized who the main character of the film is and it is a ferry. Because he is always on the move. Even when moored, he always moves a little there. There are sounds for him, at the pontoons in the cavity, there is some kind of bubbling, some kind of echo… There is no frame in the film where you can see the ferry in full, no place where we can see it from the side – well, that’s what he looks like. Even if there are any shots from the sidelines, they don’t fully reveal their ferry.
And basically the movie is like that from a ferry perspective.
Like this ferry, ferry as she sees people. It seems to me that this is probably also the social issue that this film touches on, but perhaps indirectly. One of the cornerstones of the film is time and a sense of time. The river that flows and is conditionally infinite, and we get in and cross it, and she forces us to stay a little calmer. She pulls her out of the stream we live in everyday, and she expands their sense of time. It seems to me that the speed of time in which we live now… This film is on the one hand the answer to it. The answer when trying to tell people with some premature, slow place and vehicle…
No, I don’t want to say anything to people, I hope they feel that time can and should flow on its own.
And that we don’t have to speed things up, we don’t have to force, we don’t have to compress in our lifetime. We can do things more slowly, and we can do them the way they naturally do. Speed of time is one of the challenges.
In the film, an extremely large part of the soundtrack consists of authentic, ambient sounds, noises and even the dialogues included in the film seem to serve more than mood.
The sound of the film is basically just an ambience with changing dynamics. Creating a sense of flow and presence using the unique acoustics of both shores of the ferry was very important for the film. The location and its characteristic acoustic properties formed the basis of the soundtrack. The ferry itself is like a time machine. As if a testimony of a bygone time, but with a strong sense of the present. It also has the cinematic aspect that, along with all associations, the portrayal of natural and human imagery is itself a fixation in time. Point on the road. Disconnection. The intersection between two points with a flowing river and human life in the middle. Of course, I am talking about very esoteric esotericism, but I have tried to understand for a very long time about the phenomenon of the ferry and why it manifests itself most vividly in the cell. Andrejs Tarkovskis should be quoted, who defined cinema as “making in time”. Maybe that’s why these qualities of time, which are visually observable in the film, are so pronounced, and I want to make the viewer think about it.
The film is also visually designed as an observation from the side, without interfering with the natural order of the place at all. Weren’t you afraid it wouldn’t be enough?
I was told by one of the film’s consultants that he really liked the film, but if I continued to make such films, I would be a very poor director. (laughs) In my career as a director, I probably look more at the perspective of art cinema, but documentary cinema at the moment … Well, in practice documentary cinema is even normal in general – the features of this art cinema or staging, this “directing”. They construct their film. But this movie… No one has time to make such movies, to drive countless days, some of which seem to be nothing at all. But sometimes for both the director and the cameraman, it is an independent self-analysis, because maybe nothing is happening, but maybe we don’t see it. Because what happens in the film is just what we have seen and made special. And the fear that somehow will not be enough is actually refuted by the same Latvian documentary film tradition. These are Hercs Franks, Aivars Freimanis, Ivars Seleckis – these directors and cameramen. This poetic tradition of documentary cinema shows and allows you to create poetic connections between characters, environment and shots and allows the viewer to shake something in his head. This allows everyone to interpret it completely differently. I wasn’t afraid there would be something too little or people nothing baigi will not find out, there will not be something sufficiently explained. Absolutely not.
For me, one of the goals was for the viewer to experience the ferry, get over it and have his own inner assembly in his head.
But returning to poetic documentary film, yes, it is very non-commercial, you will never be able to earn money with it – thank God.
Why are these stories, told by “Latvijas koda” films about people, places and events around us, so important? Why do you think it is important to document them?
A part of the Internet is now available and the archive “See, hear Latvia!” Is being supplemented, where the materials made by the already mentioned Seleckis, Aivars Freimanis, Podnieks and even Aloizs Brenčs are also available. They made their film magazines, documented the time – who lives there, this year, today, here, now. Fixed what was happening. There has been such a tradition in the past, and it is good that it is happening today. What is unique about the “Latvian Code” is that it not only captures, but also gives a reflection of creative people. Cinema, however, is not journalism. Whether it’s an art film or a documentary, it’s a story. Fresh documentaries are not shown so often, and the format of the short films is very grateful. 26 minutes is enough. It seems to me that the most important thing is this artist’s reflection on the place and the people where he lives. That it is not topical, but you will watch that movie, maybe in ten years and you won’t think – oh, people lived that way then, we live differently now – but maybe in ten years we will find that there is already or that we are just the same people.
It seems to me that its root through time is the best legacy that can be left behind in each of these films.
Not topicality. Not that there is a pandemic in 2020. It seemed to me that the film had the opportunity to show what is today, but with what is beyond the time, where it makes no difference whether it is 2020 or 2050. I hope that in 2050, it will be exactly the same or similar. Because it was exactly the same or similar 30 years ago on its ferry.
“Transfer” is your debut in the documentary genre. Is the next one coming up? Maybe for some other significant place in Latvia? Maybe the next film should be made about movers?
(laughs) I feel that one transfer film in my portfolio will be enough for now, I’m tired. But this, one might say yes, is my first documentary. Before that, I have created one “Latvian Chronicle” on LTV. I am currently in the process of developing several feature film scripts, but the documentary film process sharpens the human sense, mind and tentacles in general. It seems to me that if you push your concept into the reality of life, it won’t always close, and you’ll probably miss what’s really going on. In my plans, it certainly is. My plans are to shoot documentaries in the future. Most likely it will be related to the topic of ecology and nature. It seemed to me that “Ferry” is one of those stories that contrasts man and nature, their temporality with timelessness. It seems to me that serious, social issues cannot be talked about in the form of a Greenpeace activist or investigative journalist, but in a poetic and imaginative way. When people try to touch their own associations, their own imagination when they reveal themselves to themselves.
There is a lot of content right now, a lot of interviews with talking heads and scandalous stories, and freak search…
I was enjoying making this movie because I could not do it all, I could watch. We came to the ferry to film, we had no plan. We leave, and I ask Harald how he feels he would like to approach him. And he says – you know, davai, let’s sit in the lodge! – and we sit with a camera and a microphone and look at what’s going on in those square meters, that ferry basically becomes such a small TV studio, and something happens or doesn’t happen in those three four minutes. All you can do is just watch.
The film “Transfer” by director Paul Ķester, which was made in the LTV documentary project “Latvian Code”, will have its premiere on November 17 at 22.00 on LTV1 and Replay.lv.
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