I found this clip from a film by Yuris Podnieks on youtube:



Did I mention that I visited the Soviet Union, did I, did I?

Well I did. In June 1991 after some rather involved department politics in the Film and TV Department at Bristol Uni, myself and three other students, ended up on an exchange to Latvia studying with Yuris Podnieks.

In truth after being bumped as the director of the main 16mm project of the year I was convinced a trip east was pie in the sky. Also, despite my prizewinning project in P6 on the glories of the USSR my sense of where we were headed was at best hazy. So when we got the go ahead I was unprepared.

It was the first time I had flown since returning from singapore when I was all of three. Following a rather dreary night’s stopover in a wet Copenhagen, arriving in Riga felt like dropping into a parallel world, which of course in a sense it was. After we were driven to Podnieks’ offices behind a heavy steel door in the basement of the Cathouse, in the old part of Riga, we were taken to an outdoor auditorium for a large folk festival on the outskirts of the city. Six months on from declaring independence from the USSR the atmosphere at the festival was charged and disorientating for my 22 year old self. Everyone was dressed in folk dress. Most of the young people seemed to also clutch plastic bags - a transgressve display of contact with western consumerism. Back in our hotel, a building that had until recently been for visiting party officials, we watched the festival on TV and marvelled at how we had been filmed filmming.

Anyway I have written more than I meant to.

Here are some other things we/I did:
1) Got caught in a vodka stampede in a shop - Gorbachov had introduced rationing to stem endemic alcoholism.
2) watched the filming of a light entertainment programme in the barricaded tv studio
3) interviewed a beautiful ethnic russian female crane driver about her horror of beauty pagents that were then beginning to creep back into the culture
4) accompanied a photocrew as they did a photoshoot for that years "Miss Latvia" competition
5) witnessed a curator at the museum of transport reinflate a model of Brezshnev in his zill via a nozzle at his crotch (the crotch of the inflateable Brezshnev not of the curator).
6) ate cakes and fizzy wine for lunch because there was no other food
7) drank too much: beer, vodka, fizzy wine and a lethal liquor called Black Tower in people’s flats usually to a soundtrack of taped radio luxemburg programmes 8)Slept in a hayloft
9)heard the birdy song played in a variety of styles on innumerable occasions in restaraunts




In the August of 1991 the abortive coup in Moscow brought the USSR to an end. Myself and the three other students on the exchange met Yuris and his editor Antara shortly after this in London where they were editing a new film. Only a couple of weeks before the coup they had been trying to get a series idea about the break up of the Soviet Empire off the ground but had been met with incredulity by UK commissioners.
Sadly Podnieks drowned the following year.

Er, to be continued...Did I mention that I had slept on the floor of 89 year old Jeni Gilbertons mobile home in Shetland after I had watched "Rugged Island", her self produced feature film projected on the wall?