Latvijas kino starp diviem pasaules kariem: Vizuālās estētikas iezīmes
Latvian Cinema Between the Two World Wars: Traits of a Visual Aesthetics

Summary/Abstract: After the First World War, when the Hollywood film industry turned out to be one of the winners in the battle for the partition of the world, film enthusiasts from many European countries, including Latvia, had to choose their own principles of filmmaking while realising that cinema as a space of entertainment had been fully occupied by American and German films. In Latvia, the ideological power of film, its compelling status as a witness of history, its educational and persuasive potential etc., have usually been arguments in favour of cinema’s survival. Models of visual representation of the world used by Latvian cinema were derived from late 18th and early 19th century art when Enlightenment processes in culture inspired artists to take up the documentation of local life. Also, Latvian filmmakers in the 1920s and 30s tried to select characters whose outward appearance testified to their origins – in feature films, cultural films and especially in newsreels. People’s visual features often related not to the present captured in film but to the past or some mythical time – a synthesis of past and present. Latvian cinema quite directly took over the iconography and composition of Realist painting typified by balance and centricity. The use of classical composition in early films allowed the public to perceive the new attraction – cinema – more easily, accepting it as a natural continuation of 19th century technical discoveries. This type of composition as well as classical drama schemes already appear in one of the very first movies – La Sortie des Usines by the Lumière brothers (1895). The camera was absolutely static in the Lumière brothers’ first films, the dynamism being achieved by the movement in the scene being filmed. Some years later cameras were perfected to enable the first, panoramic, action. This turned out to be an ideal means to continue the traditions of Realist painting and photography, to transfer classical composition to the cinema. Panorama was first of all regarded as an appropriate action to represent landscape on the screen and, considering the role of nature in Latvian culture, it is no wonder that panoramic action became the dominant mode of shooting for many decades. Space was created as wide as possible but retaining the centre. Panorama was used mostly to shoot landscapes and important events with mass participation, so seemingly providing an objective, wide view of the event. Cinema also borrowed the ideology of landscape from painting. In late 19th – early 20th century art, the landscape in general had become the native or national landscape. The nature of the native land became the basic ethical value for the entire period under scrutiny. Movie characters were usually specified, indicating their relationships with nature. Negative characters in movies arrive from outside, most often from the city. The opposition of urban and rural ethical values is typical not only of Latvian movies of the time.

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