Armands Treilihs

This is the story of the USSR all-star basketball team – European, Olympic and world champions. What does it mean to be at the zenith of fame, at the high-point of their athletic careers, while representing the interests of a totalitarian state? And from today’s point of view, was there a sacrificing of conscience in the name of athletic glory?

A film about the events that set the Baltic States on a historic path after proclaiming independence in the early 20th century. The first attempts for closer ties were made during the 1920s and 1930s, but they couldn’t avoid losing independence again during WWII. The greatest example of Baltic States cooperation was the joint demonstration against the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 23rd, 1989 – the Baltic Way, in which almost 2 million people joined hands and created a human chain from Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius. It was a huge step towards the re-establishment of independence during the collapse of the USSR a year later. The Baltic Way was the catalyst for the process that led to the reality in which we now live: the great social, economic and political transitions of the 1990s, and the reintegration into the European cultural, economic and political milieu. The Baltic Way was the collaboration of the 3 sister-states, forging ahead, side by side, in joy and sorrow.

The film, dedicated to the 25th Anniversary of the Popular Front of Latvia, shows the most important turning points in the history of the Latvian National Awakening and Singing Revolution, as well as the rebirth of Latvian national symbols and values. In The Path to Baltic Freedom the authors focus on lesser known pages of history – the influence of perestroika on the early national movements of the 1980s, the role and participation of the Secret Service and the Communist Party in the newly-forming mass movements and their wish to guide or at least control them. The history of the Popular Front is shown not only until their victory in the first free elections in the history of the USSR that resulted in the restoration of independence for the Baltic states; the film also includes the decline of the organization after it had reached the most crucial of its goals.

The narrow, sandy strip of the seashore is a neutral zone that belongs equally to the sea and the mainland. This zone possesses an unusual chracteristic, namely, it attracts people with a practically magnetic power, transforming the beach into something like a playground where the old and the new, the primitive and the civilised, the traditional and the modern all coexist.