CONNECTIVITY: THE SPACE OF DOCUMENTARY SEQUENCES IN THREE FICTION FILMS OF RIGA FILM STUDIO: Divi (“Two”, 1965), Elpojiet dziļi (“Breathe Deeply”, 1967), and Abols upē (“Apple in the River”, 1974)
CONNECTIVITY: THE SPACE OF DOCUMENTARY SEQUENCES IN THREE FICTION FILMS OF RIGA FILM STUDIO: Divi (“Two”, 1965), Elpojiet dziļi (“Breathe Deeply”, 1967), and Abols upē (“Apple in the River”, 1974)

Summary/Abstract: The subject of this study is the augmentation of portrayal of reality in fiction films by inclusion of documentary sequences. This article explores a hypothesis that in the spacetime continuum, film borders of cinematic genres, the divide betweendocumentary and fiction cinema is disregarded. This divide appears if not artificial, then subordinated to the unity of each particular film as a text. The concept of connectivity can be applied to describe the relation of spaces of the documentary andthe fictional sequences in a film. The Latvian cinema offers a wide range of instances for the generic fusion of the documentary and the fiction film as genre. The practice of including documentary sequences into the fiction films – in a tradition of the Riga poetic documentary school in the case of this study – (re)presents historical dynamics in film poetics. The appearance of several genre s paces in one spacetime continuum of a film (re)constructs the social space of film’s production momentum. The documentary sequences in the fiction film function both as an added and illustrative value to the main fictional visual narrative, and gradually become a meaning-making element in the wholeness of this cinematic text. Initially in the short film Divi (“Two”, 1965), directed by Mihails Bogins, filmed by Rihards Pīks, and later by Henrihs Pilipsons the documentary sequences were employed to (re)create the modern urban space. Later, as the practice of documentary inclusion became common in the middle of 1960s, the documentary sequences appeared in the musical film Elpojiet dziļi (“Breathe Deeply”, 1967, directed by Rolands Kalniņš, cinematographed by Miks Zvirbulis) to construct multiplicity of spaces, uniting creative and factual realities in the narrated space of the film.

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