At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.
In January 1989 the first Message to Man International Film Festival took place in Leningrad. This film, made during the festival, is a record of its events, guests and participants, such as the American director Leo Hurwitz, the Latvian director Ivars Seleckis, and the ballerina Natalya Makarova, among others. It also shows the “engine room” of the festival: the work of the main office and the PROKKa professional cinematographers’ club, guests being greeted and seen off. A charity evening with Natalya Makarova, a memorial service to commemorate the victims of the war and excerpts of documentary films presented at the festival are also featured.
Latvian documentary filmmaker Ivars Seleckis (1934) is one of the founders of the legendary Riga school of poetic documentary film. Seleckis started his career in film in 1958 as assistant cameraman at the Riga Film Studio. In 1966, he graduated from the Moscow Film Institute as a professional cinematographer and made his debut as a documentary director in 1968. A large part of Ivars Seleckis’ filmography belongs to the canon of Latvian film history, including his Crossroad Street (1988), winner of three of the world’s most prestigious documentary awards. Now in his eighties, Seleckis is still busy making new films ‒ despite having received the Lifetime Contribution Award of Lielais Kristaps National Film Festival as he was marking his 80th birthday.
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