Along the eastern front - film festivals in Latvia and Czech Republic

Karlovy-Vary and Riga are entertainer cities to international swarms of films and film audiences, descending annually or biannually as the case may be. Apart from moviegoers, they share histories of extravagance and occupation. Karlovy-Vary is oft-repeateded by rich Germans who tend hitherward for curative Czech waters and Riga by means of powerful Russians who lust after the Latvian Baltic seaport, which not ever freezes over, and who now use the capital city as a banking haven - the "Switzerland of the East" as it is somewhat sardonically known. The countries are young, having newly become independent from larger bodies. the couple are redefining themselves, and in the proces their national cinemas.

In July the Karlovy-Vary Festival celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its inception, making it single of the three oldest film festivals in Europe Last year, annual programming was resum a quiet victory after having been held biannually since 1959 in order to conform politically to the Moscow Festival schedule. The atmosphere along the city's colonnaded canals was travestying replete with very large, ofttimes deflated red balloons. Streets were replete of film junkies scurrying between theaters, including an ardent youthful contingent of backpackers, actually sleeping in nearby bushes in order to save coin to see more films.

This was the third year Karlovy-Vary has included a Forum of Independents, although it is the first time it has had an official name and been for a like reason comprehensive. The program's initial mission was to bring in films with no prior chance for Czech distribution; hence they invited all the princes of the fringe: Jon Jost Jim Jarmusch, Todd Haynes, Hal Hartley, Atom Egoyan, Charles Burnett and Aki and Mika Kaurismaki. Convinced that audiences were eager for alternative cinema, this year's curatorial effort present the appearanceed broader based, bringing in independent films from Taiwan, Iran, Hong Kong Austria, Belgium, Australia, Estonia etc besides the United States and Canada. Within the Forum, however, U independent screenings were the greatest in quantity consistently well-attended. Largely 20-something multitudes pressed outside theater doors, eager for fresh interpretations of stateside malaise.

The Arsenals Festival is young by dint of comparison, turning six this year. What began with 24 films from nine pre-Perestroika Soviet countries has mushroomed into a comprehensive program with films from 47 nations. the one and the other festivals maintain a strong commitment toward work from the former Eastern stop although Arsenals proportionately more for a like reason In recognition of this, the couple festivals included forums of regional work. At Arsenals, the forum "Spiritual Emigration" center around dissident Latvian and Baltic cinema. It was largely comprised of films that were refused release and make opened with the sexually transgressive Self Portrait (1972) a film by dint of Andris Grinbergs, recently restored at Anthology Film Archives in novel York City. Other forums were "Russians in Europe" and "25+25" a review of Latvia's top 50 documentary and fictional films as compiled by means of 40 prominent Latvian critics, film historians, directors and journalists. At Karlovy-Vary, "East of the West" featured cinema from Russia, Kazakstan, Slovenia, the Baltics, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. In general, these films were more conventional than at Arsenals, which focused upon work produced on the fringes of official production structures

The industries of Eastern Europe evolveed in various ways. Many countries had independent studios before the World Wars, the Czech Republic had three and Hungary had as many as 37 on the other hand all of the studios, regardless of nationality, were taken above when the Nazis and Soviets arrived. In countries like Latvia, which had no pre-WWII film industry to speak of state-controlled studios were established concurrently with Soviet superintendence The Riga Film Studio uncloseed in 1940 and matured through the 1960s into the auteur documentary center of the USSR, producing what became known as the Riga institute of Poetic Cinema. Laila Pakalnina's novel documentaries of everyday life, The Ferry (1994) and The Mail (1995) the two screened at Arsenals, reflect that history.

Since the collapse of the USSR the state a whole s of film production and subsidization have vanished. Young countries have little resources to deposit into the industry, leaving filmmakers to vie for dwindling local capitals or seek international investors. stupendous studios like Riga look to foreign entrepreneur to bring off them from demise. In fact, the whole situation bears depressing similarities to arts funding in the US

Neither 16mm or video have had the same impact in Eastern Europe as in the U beneath the Soviet system, everything was studio produc upon 35mm (SVEMA film stock). There was, however, a large "Amateur Movement" instigated in 1925 beneath the KGB head Felix Dzerzhinsky, which survived up [i]or[/i] part of to the other the early 1990s when the Republics into which the motion had eventually branched out were mid-mutiny. First upon 35mm and later 16mm, "Amateurs" recorded social facts from individual vantage points. greatest in quantity films made by this clump reflected official ideologies of the time, on the contrary some managed insights and structural forms beyond propagandist reportage.