On Saturday, 16th of September, the winners of the Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF) were announced. The ceremony took place just outside the legendary cinema house Splendid Palace. The event was live-streamed on LSM.lv – the public broadcasting site of Latvia as well as for the first time in this country – a 360-degree live video was made possible.
The RIGA IFF FEATURE FILM COMPETITION comprises films from the Baltic Sea region. The award is an eight-part sculpture that the festival has developed in cooperation with artist Ervins Broks that interprets the festivals symbol and also that of Riga city – a rooster. The award along with a 2000€ reward made possible with the festivals partner in insurance – BALTA – went to the film “November” that is based on a novel by Andrus Kivirehk and directed by Rainer Sarnet, also – Estonia’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category at The Oscars 2017. According to the international jury the film is “a cinematic gem which creates a visually exceptional and mesmerizingly mysterious tragicomic black-and-white universe, washing away the borders between life and death, real and unreal in order to tell a story about pure love and inescapable sacrifice. Through humorous otherworldly approach to the past, film shapes an imaginary history, reminding audience – there is a transcendental side of everyday life”.
A video sent to the festival by the director on Saturday night: https://youtu.be/_4b0cGhB9jQ
Ole Giaever’s “From the Balcony”, a Norwegian film, earned the jury’s Special Mention. This is the director’s second feature film competing at the festival – following “Out of Nature” in 2015. The international jury’s statement: “An intimate portrait of a family before the background of perishability; to a film that tells us about the magic of small moments, the importance of enjoying the presence and the universal scale of every person's life.”
Ole also sent a video when he got to know of his feat: https://youtu.be/DIi1yI4hbh8
This year, the RIGA IFF jury members were: Timo Malmi, the artistic director of Midnight Sun Film Festival in Finnish Lapland, Bernd Buder, programme director of the Film Festival Cottbus, Dovilė Butnoriūtė, head of the Department of Film Promotion, Information and Heritage at the Lithuanian Film Centre, Lenka Tyrpáková, representing the Programme Department of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and Dāvis Sīmanis,Latvian filmmaker and associate professor at the Latvian Academy of Culture, whose “Exiled” earned him the main award of the RIGA IFF in 2016.
The members of the festival’s Youth Jury this year were: Linda Elīna Austruma, Roberts Pavlovskis, Ieva Augstkalna, Rita Buša, Kristiāna Tabiņa, Kristians Fukss, Elīza Elizabete Bicāne, and Petra Alma Peta.
The RIGA IFF Youth Jury also announced their picks on Saturday, granting another award – #YOUTH_MATTERS! award to “November”. They stated that it is “a film that is a blend between tradition and modernism with a distinct artistic expression.”
The Youth Jury also took the festival by surprise by adding a Special Mention which went to Krista Burāne’s documentary about the Latvian set designer Andris Freibergs – “The Fairytale of Empty Space”: “A film that opened our eyes and started a new page in Latvian cinema.”
On behalf of the cinema house, Vineta Verika, the Chairwoman of the Board of “Rīgas Nami”, took the stage to announce the Splendid Palace People's Choice Award. Once again, “November” took the crown with its third award of the festival.
The curator of the festival’s world documentary programme ARTDOCFEST/RIGA and the president of Artdocfest, Vitaly Mansky announced his programme’s Audience Award. This year’s winning documentary was Audrius Stonys’ “Woman and the Glacier”, and the honourable mention for the best producer’s work went to Stanislav Ershov, producer of “The Last Waltz”.
The main award of the international competition within the framework of the festivals short film, experimental cinema and music video programme SHORT RIGA was presented to Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s “Retreat”. The international jury stated that “as a sensitive and poetic portrait we experience the search of a young woman between her everyday life pursuing her artistic ideals, being not only a personal story of an artist but also an investigation into the appreciation and meaning of art in our contemporary society.”
The jury’s Special Mention was granted to Maja Borg’s film “Man”: “Using the artist’s own pregnancy to subvert iconic imagery, this film shows how representations of gender can be liberated from their original meaning in order to be inhabited by personal identity. By adding and removing layers to these images and to her own body, an Otherness that looks back into the eye of the viewer is revealed, confronting the traditional male gaze without confining itself into a binary approach on gender.”
The members of the SHORT RIGA International Jury were: Antra Gaile, Latvian producer, Christian Stark, selection committee member ofthe Winterthur International Short Film Festival, Dan Angelescu, festival coordinator and associate curator of the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF, Reinhard W. Wolf, member of the Selection Committee at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen,alongside with Swedish artist Juanna Rytel and Latvian artist Maija Kurševa.
SHORT RIGA Baltic Music Video Competition or simply the #BMV was won by Maria Reinup who had made the music video for the song “Oh no” for the band Elephants from Neptune. The International Jury’s states that it is “a work of art which works on many levels. It is fun and entertaining. It bonds with the song very well and its creative team put a lot of work into it. It presents a new wave in Baltic music scene where guys can rock out wearing high heels.”
The Special Mention went to the festival’s perennial guest and last year’s judge Saulius Baradinskas for the music video to “No Regrets” by Deeper Upper: “A music video that effortlessly succeeded in presenting a world we didn’t know existed. A world of rebellion, destruction and the battle for love”.
The #BMV Jury members were Kamil Horodecki, head of Music Video at Camerimage, the IFF of the Art of Cinematography in Poland, Liisa Lahtmets, programme and marketing manager in Tallinn’s Kultuuriklubi Kelm, Karolis Vyšniauskas, co-founder of Lithuanian music video competition at Vilnius Film Festival Kino Pavasaris, Latvian director Uģis Olte, and Nadja Sayej,Berlin-based Canadian journalist covering art, culture, music and celebrities for The Guardian, VICE, Harper’s Bazaar and The New York Times.
The RIGA IFF Children's Jury gave the KIDS WEEKEND prize to the film “Room 213” – although director Emelie Lindblom was unable to arrive to the ceremony, Evija Goluba, the representative of the Swedish Embassy in Riga, promised to deliver the award to her. This year’s Children's Jury members were: Aleksis Avots, Alisone Mae Brīniņa, Sofija Derringa, Kristiāns Freibergs, Orests Knite, Iļja Potapovs, Marians and Tomass Zandersons.
RIGA IFF is supported by the EU programme “Creative Europe – MEDIA”, the National Film Centre of Latvia, the Riga City Council, and the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia.
The 360-degree footage from the award ceremony is available on the festival’s Facebook Page www.facebook.com/RigaIFF. For the LSM video recording, please visit the website www.lsm.lv
Photos from RIGA IFF AWARDS 2017:
By Andrejs Strokins: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-FdjFmI_jltaVdlR1AxMDhnRmc?usp=sharing
By Baiba Ralle: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-FdjFmI_jltS09hekFEY1BQRkk
Trailers:
"November": https://youtu.be/6vxDnRGN120
"From the balcony": https://youtu.be/43KiBrLSAnQ
"Woman and the glacier": https://youtu.be/frBw2MGAr8c
