Carta blanca: Laila Pakalnina
In this 20th MICE, Impropias section invites the Latvian scriptwriter and film director Laila Pakalnina (Liepaja, 1962), one of the main figures in the cinematography of her country and the Baltic Republics.
Laila Pakalnina graduated in 1991 from the Department of Film Directing at the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK). Director and scriptwriter of 32 documentaries, 5 short films and 6 fiction feature films, altogether she has 43 films, 2 children, 1 husband, 1 dog and 2 bikes. And many ideas for new films. Her films were screened in official projections at Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Rome, Tallinn, and other international festivals, where they were widely awarded.
At the MICE, she will present six of her productions and discuss them with the attendees at the screenings, as part of this section which focuses on ethnographic cinema made or produced by women filmmakers.
SESsioN 1
thursday, MARCH 13 AT 6:00 PM. NUMAX
Tickets: NUMAX´s ticket office or website available from march 6.
Pa Rubika ceļu
Laila Pakalniņa
Letonia, 2010
30 min.
If the entire world can be reflected in a single drop of dew (and it can!), then why couldn’t it fit onto a single bicycle road in Latvia? A film about a world that walks, runs, crawls, sits, rides, flies. And falls. A world alive.
Sniegs
Laila Pakalniņa
Letonia, 2012
34 min.
There is a popular Latvian folksong which begins with the phrase “I was singing out high on a mountain”. The irony of it is that according to physical geography there are no mountains in Latvia. So what’s exactly the place where the Latvians are “singing out”? It may be safely said now that it’s the same place where they are skiing. That’s how we make mountains out of molehills… Snow-covered mountains, to be sure.
SESsioN 2
FRIDAY, MARCH 14 AT 6:00 PM. NUMAX
Tickets: NUMAX´s ticket office or website available from march 6.
Īsfilma par dzīvi
Laila Pakalniņa
Letonia, 2014
2 min.
Life is happening now.
Skurstenis
Laila Pakalniņa
Letonia, 2013
53 min.
Once upon a time there was a chimney. By the chimney – three houses. In the three houses – seven girls. All of them blondes.
SESsioN 3
SATURDAY, MARCH 15 AT 7:30 PM. NUMAX
Tickets: NUMAX´s ticket office or website available from march 6.
Čau, Rasma!
Laila Pakalniņa
Letonia, 2015
38 min.
Where did Estonians get bicycles and sewing machines? If not other nations, then at least Latvians often ponder why their neighbors Estonians live as well as they do. So why is that? Latvian ship RASMA, which sank near Mohni Island 70 years ago, is a reason to provoke the harmonious life of Northern Estonians living on the harshly beautiful coast, by questioning whether at least some basis of their well-being might have come from the Latvian ship.
Rumba
Laila Pakalniņa
Letonia, 2016
21 min.
Waterfall and I, and …no, the other way around! This film is, of course, about nature, human nature. Or what a human can do with the widest waterfall in Europe.