KIDS
WEEKEND
GREAT CINEMA FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
Latvia is a small country. And this is just the fourth year that a festival of such international significance takes place in Riga. We need new and young people to fall in love with the beautiful world of cinema! This is an honest answer as to why it is so important to have a whole weekend dedicated to films for the whole family, why it is important to provide additional captivating pastimes as well… Two fascinating days of a cinematic adventure for schoolchildren, pre-school kids and their kin.
An immense dissappointment. Instead of a puppy for her birthday she got a father…
“I want to make films that trigger a positive crisis within yourself, films able to make you face your essential self.” A. Jodorowsky Santiago de Chile, during the thrilling years of the 40s and the 50s. Alejandrito Jodorowsky, aged twenty, decides to become a poet against the will of his family. He is introduced in the inner circle of the artistic and intellectual avant-garde of the time and meets Enrique Lihn, Stella Diaz, Nicanor Parra and many other promising but anonymous young writers who will become the masters of Latin America’s modern literature. Totally immersed in this world of poetic experimentation, they live together as few have dared to live before: sensually, authentically, freely, madly.
Plastic surgeon Dr. Génessier does everything in his power to reconstruct the face of his beloved daughter after a car crash he caused. He needs material for the numerous skin grafting surgeries… Visually beautiful and chillingly dispassionate reminder that cruelty and atrocities are a part of human nature – it is nothing exceptional in desperate situations. It is said that, in Paris, the first spectators of this poetic horror film with music by Maurice Jarre were dropping like flies. This film has been quoted and interpreted in many cinematographic pieces. It inspired Billy Idol to compose the song Eyes Without Face. Meanwhile, the greatest achievement of the film’s director is the foundation of the Cinémathèque Française together with the legendary Henri Langlois.
During the other half of the eighties the world was electrified. Not just by the power shifts of the Cold War, not just because the Berlin Wall fell, also because something new and exciting was emerging when the blossoming electronic dance music culture of the West met the avant-garde that was lurking behind the Iron Curtain of the East. It’s incredible that the huge cultural upheaval Latvia experienced during that time had mainly a sole architect – Indulis Bilzēns. It’s no less incredible that this story has not until now been covered by documentary film-makers.
