“Podnieks on Podnieks” is the story of a phenomenally influential Latvian documentarian who is remembered by relatively few today – 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.
That Juris Podnieks’ films, which chronicled what he called “the death of the monster,” 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 “Podnieks on Podnieks” with Antra Cilinska, a former editor for Podnieks.
Related Stories
In fact, Podnieks, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1992, gained worldwide attention for his relentless need to “be there” during events that would turn out to mark the end of the Cold War.
Popular on Variety
The 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 “Homeland.”
But in Podnieks’ own country, he was celebrated and respected as a rare source of truth telling and courageous reporting on a world that was changing fast.
“Podnieks on Podnieks” 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.
When the film was being conceived, says Viduleja, the discovery of the director’s personal journals was a breakthrough moment.
“After I was invited into the project by Antra Cilinska, director, producer and the head of JPS – Juris Podnieks Studio,” she recalls, “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 own thoughts, 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” seemed to be the right title.”
At first, the directing duo had only the diary excerpts the magazine 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 would be uncovered.
They found detailed entries written during the making of the film about the last Latvian Rifles units and also Lenin’s Praetorian Guard soldiers.
“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, someone who had been close to Podnieks would share more of the director’s journals with Viduleja and Cilinska.
The 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.
The 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’s version of a war of progress and purpose.
If made even a few months earlier, “Is it Easy” would likely 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.”