Andra Lejniece

Latgale is a land on the very eastern edge of the European Union. Sometimes it seems like a land in the middle of a body of water. At other times, it seems a desert with the ark of rescued humanity all covered by sand. The film presents a land that is made by people, spiritual and physical extremes of living and thoroughly Christian resurrection.

Peter is just another "peter", so very ordinary. He works in an office where colleagues make fun of him and the boss makes sexual advances. His sick mother harasses him at home. Bit by bit his life becomes completely unbearable. Once, by chance, Peter happens to try magic mushrooms and this adventure turns into a move towards a different life.

Composers are regular people – they drive public transport, do sports, pay their bills. And still – they are very different as they are able to comprehend sound. The documentary film Sounds Under the Sun is an inspiring cinematic journey all over the world to meet some of the world-famous contemporary classical music composers. Visiting Alaskan forests, skyscrapers in Tokyo, and war zone in Georgia, the film gives a glimpse of how the composers share their struggle to create music from the moment of sonic creation till the moment when their music is interpreted for public (the film features composers Sir John Tavener from the UK, Leonid Desyatnikov from Russia, Giya Kancheli from Georgia, Dobrinka Tabakova from Bulgaria, John Luther Adams from the USA, and Ko Matsushita from Japan, and one of the world’s best youth choirs, Kamēr..., from Latvia).

The documentary draws a portrait of an opera director who is staging Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre. He is torn between the tragicomic routine of an opera house and his own perception of Wagner and the Ring cycle. The film witnesses the director’s drama in maintaining the fragile link between a well-constructed performance and his own vision that lies within the music and the narrative, and is seen as German expressionism-like nightmares.

To touch the paper, to hear the sound of the pencil and to always trace himself - those are the rules of Latvian artist, Ilmārs Blumbergs. The story of a man who does not create art for around or within, but has instead made it a constant state of being.

Ten years ago the Latvian National Opera was reopened after an immense reconstruction. Now this is the place where artists and the stage come together in an unusual atmosphere to create “the miracle” of music, action, text – elements of the opera phenomenon.