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An audiovisual interpretation of one of the "epiphanies" by Imants Ziedonis.
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Vija Vetra is the famous Latvian dancer and choreographer. She was admired for her dancing by Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. She was loved by the world famous American poet Robert Lowell. She was the first to introduce sacred dance into church services in many different countries around the world. She has learned to cross freely the cultural boundaries, feeling equally at home both in Eastern and Western dance traditions. Born in Latvia, she has spent her life in different parts of the world and the camera traces her in the film (from India in 70ies where she had been renowned as "Vijaya", to New York, Greece, and Latvia today). The film is as colorful as her life: loud and happy like the feelings aroused by her splendid performance, deep and unknowable like her inner world, and sad, quiet and calm like loneliness itself?
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World War II separated the Latvian nation into two parts. Fleeing Soviet occupation, a large part of the people left their homeland by the Baltic Sea and sought refuge in the West. New York’s Hell’s Kitchen district became their home and the core of Latvian cultural exiles became young poets and artists. The film traces across half a century to show their life today and what has happened to those young writers and poets (the Troubadour – Gunars Silins, the Internal Dissident – Janis Kreslins, Philosopher the Dionisios – Robert Muks, the Estranged One – Rita Gale, the Observer – Aina Kraujiete, the Outsider – Dzintars Sodums) in their effort to combine the trends of global culture with their ethnic identity, when two cultures, Latvian and American, intersected.
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