{"id":257864,"date":"2025-11-03T02:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T02:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/257864\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T02:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T02:03:09","slug":"podnieks-on-podnieks-reveals-the-dreams-of-a-witness-to-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/257864\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Podnieks on Podnieks’ Reveals the Dreams of a Witness to History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cPodnieks on Podnieks\u201d is the story of a phenomenally influential Latvian documentarian who is remembered by relatively few today \u2013 but whose work was once seen by over 40 million people in the former Soviet Union. The film played last week at Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThat Juris Podnieks<\/a>\u2019 films, which chronicled what he called \u201cthe death of the monster,\u201d as the director called the last days of the Soviet Union, were seen by anyone was something of a miracle. A likely reason that happened was because he worked in the era he did, says Anna Viduleja, who co-directed \u201cPodnieks on Podnieks\u201d with Antra Cilinska, a former editor for Podnieks.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, Podnieks, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1992, gained worldwide attention for his relentless need to \u201cbe there\u201d during events that would turn out to mark the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe BBC would turn to him for accounts of uprisings in his native Latvia in which protesters faced off with Moscow-backed armies, sometimes fatally. Podnieks himself witnessed his cameraman taking a fatal hit while the team were recording events on the streets of Riga in 1992. Another colleague died later of injuries caused by troops trying to quell the mass choruses singing songs banned by the Soviets, something Podnieks put into his film \u201cHomeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Podnieks\u2019 own country, he was celebrated and respected as a rare source of truth telling and courageous reporting on a world that was changing fast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPodnieks on Podnieks\u201d reveals the thoughts, worries and drive of this remarkable figure, using personal diaries, photographs and film footage, presenting what Viduleja calls the life journey of a filmmaker who reflects on his obsessions but is unable to control them.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the film was being conceived, says Viduleja, the discovery of the director\u2019s personal journals was a breakthrough moment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter I was invited into the project by Antra Cilinska, director, producer and the head of JPS \u2013 Juris Podnieks Studio,\u201d she recalls, \u201cI found a Latvian magazine Kino Raksti from 2000 in which there was an excerpt from Juris Podnieks diary from 1975.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTelling Podnieks story incorporating his own thoughts, she says, \u201cseemed to be the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI looked at the shelf above and the books: Fellini on Fellini, Bergman on Bergman, Kieslowski on Kieslowski, Cassavetes on Cassavetes\u2026 so \u201cPodnieks on Podnieks\u201d seemed to be the right title.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt first, the directing duo had only the diary excerpts the magazine had used, Viduleja says, \u201cbut 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, \u2018Do you need my thoughts on the making of the Strelnieku zvaigznajs (\u2018The Constellation of the Riflemen\u2019)?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd more diary pages would be uncovered.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey found detailed entries written during the making of the film about the last Latvian Rifles units and also Lenin\u2019s Praetorian Guard soldiers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOr later as we researched the materials on Podnieks making the film about the post-war generation of sculptors: \u2018Sisyphus Rolling a Rock.\u2019 Or his most dear film, \u2018Is it Easy to be Young?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEach time, someone who had been close to Podnieks would share more of the director\u2019s journals with Viduleja and Cilinska.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe latter film was made based on the confessions of young people living in Latvia who openly spoke of patronizing teachers and parents, worries for the future and fears over fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 1986 film also included accounts by former conscripts who had been forced to participate in the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, making clear the hopelessness and brutality of the war, starkly contrasting with the Kremlin\u2019s version of a war of progress and purpose.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf made even a few months earlier, \u201cIs it Easy\u201d would likely have been banned, says Viduleja. Instead, \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJuris\u2019 cousin, Inara Zelti\u0146a, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1978 Podnieks wrote in a letter to his colleague, \u201cMaybe 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!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPodnieks ability to recognize the wider political and social processes that were happening in the society,\u201d says Viduleja, \u201ccombined 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPodnieks on Podnieks\u201d is the story of a phenomenally influential Latvian documentarian who is remembered by relatively few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,49495,75,119715,119716,337],"class_list":["post-257864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-documentaries-to-watch","tag-entertainment","tag-ji-hlava-intl-documentary-film-festival","tag-juris-podnieks","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}