January 13, 1991, is the most important date in the history of modern Latvia, says Latvian filmmaker, theatre and opera director Viesturs Kairišs, who has completed a film recreating the historic events of three decades ago.
“The desire to escape the Soviet empire was boundless. We have never been so united again,” says the director of the feature film January. His film is also a tribute to the legendary Latvian documentary filmmaker Juris Podnieks (1950-1992), who, with his cameraman, filmed the unforgettable images of January 13, 1991, in Vilnius.
This Friday, January – a Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish co-production – opens in Lithuanian cinemas. It is an autobiographical look at the youthful dreams and events that brought down the Soviet Union and restored freedom to the Baltic states.
Latvia in 1991. The protagonist, Yazis (played by Karlis A. Avots), together with his friends Anna (Alise Dzene) and Zep (Sandis Runge), enjoy the freedom of their youth and dream of becoming intellectual filmmakers. The names Tarkovsky, Bergman and Jarmusch are ever on their lips. However, the young people’s destinies are changed by the need to participate in peaceful resistance and to record political events. Dreams bounce into reality.
A week of bloody January
Yazi, 19, is unable to find himself at a time of great change and sees no purpose in the future. According to director Kairišs, who lived through a similar period, there was much to fear – everything was falling apart, national borders were closing, you could only study cinema in Moscow or Leningrad (now St Petersburg). And the West was still a terra incognita.
“I remember finding myself in some kind of enclosed space, like a cold sea. You walk through it and you still don’t know how to break through the ice,” says Kairišs (born 1971).
His fears reached a climax in January 1991, after the events in Vilnius. Everyone felt that the hope of freedom could be destroyed, says the Latvian. The bloody events lasted a week, starting on January 13 in the Lithuanian capital and continuing until the tragic day of January 20 in Riga.
“The reaction of the Latvian people to the actions of the invaders [in Vilnius] was overwhelming. Half a million people gathered in Riga on the day of January 13 to protest. The Latvian People’s Front called for barricades to be erected to prevent a repeat of the Vilnius tragedy. Everyone flocked to Riga and by the evening the city was transformed into one huge fortress. It was a historic week for Latvia, because the people were not afraid, they took to the streets ready to die for freedom,” the director recalls.
January 13 scratched a long-hidden wound from 50 years of occupation, he says. “I think it is the most important date in the history of modern Latvia. Latvians felt great support and protested against the Soviet Union. The desire to get out of the empire once and for all was boundless. We have never been so united again,” says Kairišs.
Podnieks filmed in Vilnius
The film uses a lot of archive footage. A large part of it is captured by the legendary Latvian documentary filmmaker Juris Podnieks. Therefore, the filmmakers decided to film January with old cameras, so-called Betacams.
“It was not so easy to find them,” says the director. “This solution gives the feeling that the actors are in a historical time, in real events.”
The documentary footage used in the film is, according to Kairišs, very well-known in Latvia and painfully familiar to Lithuanians. The point is that Podnieks, according to Kairišs, felt at the time that the main events would take place in Lithuania, so he came to Vilnius in January specifically to show his films, and together with the cameraman Aleksandrs Demčenko, he was caught up in the whirlwind of action.
The episode of the special unit Omon officers attacking unarmed people near the Lithuanian Radio and Television building with a machine gun was filmed by these Latvian documentary filmmakers, as were many others.
“Back in Riga, Juris made sure that the entire free world saw the images from Vilnius. The very next day, they were broadcast by the biggest TV stations on the planet,” says Kairišs.
‘Get the hell out of Latvia’
In Latvia, Soviet troops killed seven civilians in January. Five were shot by a sniper outside the Ministry of the Interior on January 20, including two well-known Latvian cameramen working with Podnieks. The death of one of them is depicted at the end of his film.
“This is an ethically very difficult scene where we tried to combine documentary with fiction. A man dies for the sake of filmmaking – it was very important for me to show that,” says the filmmaker.
He used very famous shots of the Riga barricades – a cameraman being carried out on a stretcher, the bloody January snow, the cry: “Get the hell out of Latvia!”
Kairišs dedicates January to all the filmmakers who have died filming history. “To Mantas Kvedaravičius, who was killed in Mariupol, too,” he says.
Podnieks passed away in 1992. He was very upset about the death of his colleagues, and even considered himself guilty – he lost his health, smoked a lot, drank a lot.
“Of course, he didn’t force his colleagues to go to the centre of Riga that night to film, but he thought that the fatal bullet was aimed at him. Because he was there with a camera. His death in a lake one year later was the stuff of legends,” Kairišs says.
According him, the character of Podnieks (played by Juhan Ulfsak) in the film links the deaths of the young cinematographers and cameramen on January 20 – fiction and reality.
Contribution of Lithuanian filmmakers
Latvian music of the time plays an important role in the film, alternative and experimental. This is the kind of cinema that young filmmakers dreamed of making.
“Music influenced the lifestyle of young people. It was a revelation for me – it’s very suggestive, it’s a good representation of the time. On the other hand, music in general played a huge role when the Soviet Union fell. Rock musicians, as always, were the most courageous, the first to give voice to what others were quietly feeling,” says Kairišs.
In the film, Yasi’s father, Andrei, a member of the Communist Party, is played by the Lithuanian actor Aleksas Kazanavičius.
Many of the film’s scenes were shot in Vilnius and Naujoji Vilnia, and more Lithuanian artists contributed to the production: music was written by composer Justė Janulytė, sound was directed by Jonas Maksvytis, and costumes were designed by Rūta Lečaitė.
The world premiere of January took place last June at the Tribeca Film Festival in the USA, where it was awarded as the best foreign film. It also won three awards at the Rome International Film Festival, for best film, best director, and best actor. January also won the best director award at the Warsaw Film Festival.
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