Latvian amateur documentary: family, community, travel, and politics in the films of Uldis Lapiņš, Ingvars Leitis, and Zigurds Vidiņš, 1970s-1980s

Inese Strupule (UCL SSEES)

Inese Strupule will present her research on Latvian amateur documentary: family, community, travel, and politics in the films of Uldis Lapiņš, Ingvars Leitis, and Zigurds Vidiņš, 1970s-1980s.

Drawing upon the amateur film collection held at the Latvian State Archive of Audiovisual Documents, this presentation will identify and analyse the various functions that Latvian amateur documentary films performed beyond their ostensible mission of transmitting Soviet ideology, and examine their role in creating alternative political, social, and cultural meanings, and prospects for national identity development and heritage preservation. It will primarily focus on the documentaries by Uldis Lapiņš, Zigurds Vidiņš, and Ingvars Leitis made in the 1970 and the 1980s, and look at how they used everyday matters – such as family, community, and travel – to express artistically as well as to address broader social and political issues of life in the post-war Soviet society.