Podnieks on Podnieks tells the story of a phenomenally influential Latvian documentarian, remembered today by relatively few people. But his work was once seen by more than 40 million people in the former Soviet Union. The film was screened at Jihlava International Airport last week. Documentary film festival.
It was a miracle that anyone could see Julis Podniks’s film, which chronicled what the director called the “monster death” of the final years of the Soviet Union. That likely happened because he worked at the same time, says Anna Vidreya, who co-directed Podniex on Podniex with former Podniex editor Antora Silinska.
Indeed, Podnieks, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1992, gained worldwide attention for his persistent desire to be “there” during the events that would mark the end of the Cold War.
The BBC also interviewed him about the uprising in his native Latvia, where protesters faced off against Moscow-backed forces, sometimes fatally. Podnieks himself witnessed the fatal injury of a cameraman while his team was filming an event on the streets of Riga in 1992. Another colleague later died from injuries sustained by troops trying to suppress a chorus of banned Soviet songs that Podnieks included in the film Homeland.
But in Podnieks’ home country, he was admired and respected as a rare source of truth and courage in reporting about a rapidly changing world.
“Podonyx on Podonyx” uses personal diaries, photographs, and film footage to reveal the thoughts, worries, and ambitions of this remarkable man, presenting the journey through the life of a filmmaker who, as Vidreya calls it, reflects on his obsessions but cannot control them.
According to Vidreya, the discovery of the director’s personal diary was a breakthrough moment when the film was conceived.
“After I was invited to join the project by director, producer and head of the JPS Julis Podnieks Studio, Antla Silinska, I found a Latvian magazine called Kino Laksti published in 2000, which contained excerpts from Julis Podnieks’ diary from 1975,” she recalls.
“These pages contained his passion for creative work, precise details of the filmmaking process at the Riga Documentary Film Studio, as well as his gentle attitude and personal wishes towards his newlywed wife.”
Telling a story that incorporated Podnicus’ own ideas “seemed like the answer,” she says.
“I looked at the shelves and the books above. Fellini about Fellini, Bergman about Bergman, Kieślowski about Kieślowski, Cassavetes about Cassavetes… So ‘Podonicus about Podonicus’ seemed like the right title.”
Director Vidreja says, “Initially, the director duo only had excerpts from the diary used by the magazine, but as they worked with certain film archive materials, Podnieks’ diary began to appear one after another.It was as if Julis was looking at us from the edge of a cloud and asking, “Do you want my opinion on the making of Strelniec Zveigznais?”
And more diary pages will be discovered.
They discovered detailed descriptions of the last Latvian rifle unit and Lenin’s SS soldiers written during the making of the film.
“Or later, when I researched material on Podonychus making a film about the postwar generation of sculptors, Sisyphus Rolls the Rock. Or his most treasured film, Is It Easy to Be Young?
Each time, someone close to Podniecs shared further copies of the director’s diary with Vidreja and Silinska.
The latter film was based on the confessions of young people living in Latvia who openly talked about their patronizing of teachers and parents, their worries about the future, and their fear of radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.
The 1986 film also included testimonies from former conscripts forced to participate in Russia’s occupation of Afghanistan, revealing the hopelessness and brutality of the war, in stark contrast to the Kremlin’s interpretation of it as a war for progress and purpose.
If it had been made even a few months earlier, “Is it Easy” likely would have been banned, Vidreya said. Instead, “the political changes initiated by Gorbachev gave this film the opportunity to appear on the screen, and after that there was no stopping it.”
“Inara Zertisha, Julis’s cousin, provided us with his diary and revealed the challenges he set for himself in the process of building honest relationships with the younger generation depicted in the film.”
In 1978, Podnieks wrote in a letter to a colleague: “It may be arrogant of me to say that I will come and tell the whole truth with my own eyes and head, but I am determined to do it!”
“Podniek’s ability to recognize the broader political and social processes that were going on in society,” says Vidreja. “This, combined with his sincere and deep interest in the lives of those with whom he speaks, is the reason why his films were understood and appreciated by tens of millions of Soviet citizens.”
