‘Podnieks on Podnieks’ Reveals the Dreams of a Witness to History

“Podnieks on Podnieks” is the story of a phenomenally influential Latvian documentarian who’s remembered by comparatively few today – however whose work was as soon as seen by over 40 million people in the former Soviet Union. The movie performed last week at Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival.

That Juris Podnieks’ movies, which chronicled what he called “the death of the monster,” as the director called the last days of the Soviet Union, have been seen by anybody was one thing of a miracle. A probable motive that occurred was because he labored in the period he did, says Anna Viduleja, who co-directed “Podnieks on Podnieks” with Antra Cilinska, a former editor for Podnieks.

In fact, Podnieks, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1992, gained worldwide consideration for his relentless want to “be there” during occasions that would flip out to mark the end of the Cold War.

The BBC would flip to him for accounts of uprisings in his native Latvia during which protesters confronted off with Moscow-backed armies, sometimes fatally. Podnieks himself witnessed his cameraman taking a deadly hit while the team have been recording occasions on the streets of Riga in 1992. Another colleague died later of accidents brought on by troops making an attempt to quell the mass choruses singing songs banned by the Soviets, one thing Podnieks put into his movie “Homeland.”

But in Podnieks’ personal nation, he was celebrated and revered as a uncommon source of fact telling and brave reporting on a world that was altering fast.

“Podnieks on Podnieks” reveals the ideas, worries and drive of this outstanding determine, utilizing private diaries, pictures and movie footage, presenting what Viduleja calls the life journey of a filmmaker who displays on his obsessions however is unable to management them.

When the movie was being conceived, says Viduleja, the discovery of the director’s private journals was a breakthrough second.

“After I was invited into the project by Antra Cilinska, director, producer and the head of JPS – Juris Podnieks Studio,” she remembers, “I found a Latvian magazine Kino Raksti from 2000 in which there was an excerpt from Juris Podnieks diary from 1975.”

“The passion for his creative tasks, precise details of the filmmaking process in the Riga Documentary Film Studio as well as his kind attitude to his newly wed wife and personal hopes were in these pages.”

Telling Podnieks story incorporating his personal ideas, she says, “seemed to be the answer.”

“I looked at the shelf above and the books: Fellini on Fellini, Bergman on Bergman, Kieslowski on Kieslowski, Cassavetes on Cassavetes… so “Podnieks on Podnieks” appeared to be the proper title.”

At first, the directing duo had only the diary excerpts the journal had used, Viduleja says, “but then Podnieks diaries started to appear one by one as we were working with the particular film archive materials. As if Juris would be watching us from the edge of a cloud above there asking, ‘Do you need my thoughts on the making of the Strelnieku zvaigznajs (‘The Constellation of the Riflemen’)?”

And more diary pages could be uncovered.

They discovered detailed entries written during the making of the movie about the last Latvian Rifles models and also Lenin’s Praetorian Guard troopers.

“Or later as we researched the materials on Podnieks making the film about the post-war generation of sculptors: ‘Sisyphus Rolling a Rock.’ Or his most dear film, ‘Is it Easy to be Young?’”

Each time, somebody who had been shut to Podnieks would share more of the director’s journals with Viduleja and Cilinska.

The latter movie was made based on the confessions of younger people residing in Latvia who brazenly spoke of patronizing academics and oldsters, worries for the future and fears over fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.

The 1986 movie also included accounts by former conscripts who had been compelled to take part in the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, making clear the hopelessness and brutality of the battle, starkly contrasting with the Kremlin’s version of a battle of progress and function.

If made even a few months earlier, “Is it Easy” would seemingly have been banned, says Viduleja. Instead, “The political changes that were started by Gorbachev gave this film a chance to land on the screen and after that it was not possible to stop it anymore.”

“Juris’ cousin, Inara Zeltiņa, granted us his diaries, revealing the tasks he set himself during the process of creating his honest relationship with the young generation portrayed in the film.”

In 1978 Podnieks wrote in a letter to his colleague, “Maybe it is my arrogance to say that I shall come and using my eye and my head shall tell the whole truth, but I am determined to do so!”

“Podnieks ability to recognize the wider political and social processes that were happening in the society,” says Viduleja, “combined with his sincere and deep interest in the life of the person he was talking to, is the reason why his film was understood and valued by those tens of millions of Soviet people.”