For two months, the third-grade students at Cēsis’ New Primary School have been plan-ning and organizing their own graduation ceremony. Throughout this process, the teach-ers are only there to help, trusting in the children’s wisdom, responsibility and ability to organize themselves, make decisions and follow through. Preparations for the celebration involve all the school subjects, turning the school into a place of exciting discovery, where children learn by doing things that are important to them. They enthusiastically live life in the here and now, in all its difficulties and joy.

Think School

Accomplished European scenographer and educator Andris Freibergs paints a self-portrait by shaping the stage for an imaginary production titled “Andris Freibergs”. He transforms himself into a space that contains close to eighty years worth of stunning success, tragic loss, birth and death. It is an attempt to create the perfect empty space – one that would simultaneously encompass everything and nothing, the beginning and the end.

The Fairytale of Empty Space

During  Latvia’s  centennial  year,  15  filmmakers  created  each  his  own  film  portrait  of  a  person  living  in  Latvia  on  the  background  of  centenary  events.  Documentary  2018  combines  these  stories  into  a  unique  poetic  vision  based  on  analogy  with  the  documentary  235  000  000,  a  classic  of  the  Riga  school  of  poetic  documentary  cinema.  This  film  is  an  attempt to make sure whether the codes of the poetic cinema are still relevant and accessible today.

2018

While playing hide and seek, children discover unprecedented objects, places, and creatures behind the doors of an antique wardrobe! They find themselves in an unexpected universe full of colours and sounds, inhabited by beings both real and only encountered in fantasy. They, too, hide and seek each other throughout the year.

Magic Wardrobe Song

Claudio is a farmer. His wife Ivana is a dressmaker and they are avid tango dancers. They have a big dream: to dance the tango together in Buenos Aires.  Claudio has Parkinson’s, an incurable degenerative disease. His condition was diagnosed 20 years ago. Doctors told him that he would be in a wheelchair within two years. However, not only is Claudio still on his feet and able to work, but he’s also still dancing. Today he is devoted to fostering and supporting research on the benefits of tango for Parkinson’s patients.  Claudio and Ivana’s story inspired the renowned Latvian composer Arturs Maskats to write a new tango composition with world-famous accordionist Ksenija Sidorova. But just as their dream of dancing in Buenos Aires is about to come true, Claudio is hospitalized...