This is a confession in film. I have dedicated it to all the cameramen whom I had the honor of working with, and whose one eye was dry and the other one - in tears. Every single shot out of 400 shots this film consists of is a true document. Altogether, they form an imaginative weave of a dramatic plot, unique philosophy, personal world perception, and certainly, visual culture. All the rest - words, music, noises, silence, all having their own voice - have grown together with the images dwelling in this film.
Documentary, 2002, Betacam SP, colour / b/w, mono, 102’ |
Script / Director
Herz Frank
Camera
Viktors Griberns
Herz Frank
Music
Ludgards Gedravics
Jirzi Pauers
G.F. Hendel
Sound
Aivars Riekstins
Sergejs Usanovs
Editing
Sergejs Usanovs
Herz Frank
Producer
Herz Frank
Guntis Trekteris
Production Company
EFEF
Kaupo Filma
Coproduction with
ZDF-ARTE
Premiere
11.2002.
IDFA Amsterdam
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A person's inner life, personality, and the eternal problems - love, birth, death, and destiny - are what have always attracted me as a documentary filmmaker... And I have always doubted if we, documentary filmmakers, have the right to expose other people's life? I was doubtful, still I went on filming.
"The Last Judgment" " 1987. A story from the cell of death. Repentance of a person who has been sentenced to death for murder. An old dilemma, dating back to the times of the Bible - to execute or to mercy?
"The Restricted Area" - 1975, The destiny of a teenage boy serving his time at the juvenile delinquent prison. The family and social roots of the drama.
"Once There Were Seven Simeons" — 1989. The famous family jazz group from Irkutsk. Their wild attempt to break away from the USSR to the West by hijacking a plane. And - the tragic end,
"The Last Celebration" -1972-1980. An optimistic drama of a man who has devoted himself to people. Death as continuation of life.
"The Song of Solomon" - 1989. A childbirth. The torturing entrance of a human child into God's world. The more elevated meaning of being and earthly delights of a man and a woman.
"And they became one flesh, and they were not ashamed."
"Flashback" - born from -the short film, Ten Minutes Older, of 1978. Together with the cameraman Juris Podnieks, we shot this film in one take at the Puppet Theatre. For ten minutes, uninterruptedly, we were looking into the face of a little boy on the third row... And in the half-dark of the theatre hall we were watching the depths of the human soul as reflected in this tremulous face. In 1999,1 decided to return to our boy. What had happened to this tremulous soul in real life, with real, not fairy-tale, good and evil? Together with cameraman Victor Griberman, I started making a new film, "Twenty Years Older," having no suspicion that I am sending off a boomerang. I have never supported the philosophy that a man can come to know himself only at,a fatal margin - like facing death. And then, I found myself in a similar situation. The door to the new film was opened to me by the White Angel; the Black Angel was hiding behind it. My wife came down with a terminal disease, and I myself had to face a heart operation. I was on the verge of giving up everything. But the challenge of documentary filmmaking was stronger than me.
I turned the camera to myself, and looked back... Flashback! I looked back at my films, at my life which, as it turned out, it was possible to prolong if the open heart was touched. I looked back at the sad destiny of my wife who had faded away in front of my eyes... at my tiny hometown Ludza in Latvia -a small town where I was born, where everything had began. My mom was a dentist, and my dad was a photographer whose life-dream was to make a film...
It was a free flight: Riga-Moscow-New York-Jerusalem... I delved into the past like in a dream. And it was not important what had happened before or later. Everything went on inside me...
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