“Podnieks on Podnieks” reveals the dreams of a witness to history
“Podnieks on Podnieks” is the story of a hugely influential Latvian documentarian who is remembered by relatively few today – but whose work has been seen by more than 40 million people in the former Soviet Union. The film was screened last week at Ji.hrav Intl. Documentary Film Festival.
The fact that Yuris Budnik’s films, which recorded what he called “the death of the monster”, as the director called the last days of the Soviet Union, were seen by everyone was something of a miracle. One possible reason this happened is that he was working in the era he was working in, says Anna Vidulja, who co-directed “Podnieks on Podnieks” with Antra Selinska, a former Podnieks editor.
In fact, Budnicks, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1992, gained worldwide attention because of his urgent need to “be there” during the events that marked the end of the Cold War.
The BBC turned to him for accounts of the uprisings in his native Latvia, in which demonstrators confronted Moscow-backed armies, sometimes fatally. Budniks himself witnessed his cameraman take a fatal blow while the team was recording events on the streets of Riga in 1992. Another colleague later died of wounds inflicted by troops trying to suppress mass choirs singing songs banned by the Soviets, something Budniks put into his film Homeland.
But in Budniks’ country, he was celebrated and respected as a rare source of truth-telling and courageous reporting about a world that was rapidly changing.
Using personal diaries, photographs and film stills, “Podnieks on Podnieks” reveals the thoughts, fears and motivations of this fascinating character, presenting what Viduleja calls the life journey of a filmmaker contemplating his obsessions but unable to control them.
When the film was being conceived, discovering the director’s personal diary was a great moment, says Vidulja.
“After I was invited to the project by Antra Selinska, director, producer and head of JPS – Juris Podnieks Studio, I found a Latvian magazine Kino Raksti from 2000 containing an excerpt from Juris Podnieks’ memoirs from 1975,” she recalls.
“The passion for his creative undertakings and the minute details of the filmmaking process at the Riga Documentary Film Studio as well as his kind attitude towards his newly married wife and his personal hopes are present in these pages.”
Telling Budnick’s story, which includes his own thoughts, “seems to be the answer,” she says.
“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’ seems to be the right title.”
At first, the director duo only had excerpts from the diaries that the magazine used, says Vidulija, “but then Budnick’s diaries began to appear one by one as we worked with selected film archive materials. It was as if Joris was watching us from the edge of a cloud above and asking: ‘Do you need my thoughts on the making of Strelnieku zvaigznajs (“Constellation of Guns”)?”
More diary pages will be revealed.
They found detailed entries written during the filming about the last Latvian rifle units as well as soldiers of Lenin’s Imperial Guard.
“Or later when we researched the materials used in Podnieks’ making of the film about the post-war generation of sculptors: ‘Sisyphus Rolling a Rock.’ Or his favorite film: Is it easy to be young?
Each time, someone close to Podnieks shared more of the director’s memoirs with Viduleja and Cilinska.
The latest film was made based on the confessions of young people living in Latvia who spoke publicly about caring teachers and parents, their fears about the future and their fears about the repercussions of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
The 1986 film also included accounts of former conscripts forced to participate in the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, illustrating the desperation and brutality of the war, in stark contrast to the Kremlin’s version of a war of progress and purpose.
If it had been produced a few months earlier, it likely would have been banned, Viduliga says. Instead, “the political changes initiated by Gorbachev gave this film a chance to land on the screen after which it could not be stopped anymore.”
“Joris’s cousin, Inara Zeltina, has given us his memoirs, revealing the tasks he set for himself in the process of creating his honest connection with the younger generation portrayed in the film.”
In 1978, Budnicks wrote in a letter to a colleague: “It may be arrogant of me to say that I will come and use my eyes and my head to tell the whole truth, but I am determined to do it!”
“Budnik’s ability to recognize the broader political and social processes that were happening in society, combined with his sincere and deep interest in the life of the person he was speaking to, is why his film was understood and appreciated by tens of millions of Soviet people,” says Viduliga.