Homeland

In HOMELAND director Juris Podnieks, a Prix d'Italia winner, has put together a graphic testimony to the fight for political self-determination by the people of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. He combines the 1990 traditional song festivals in these republics with personal stories describing the fate of the Baltic people. The film begins with a seven-minute memorial piece, dedicated to two cameramen from Podnieks' crew, who worked on HOMELAND - Andris Slapinsh and Gvido Zvaigzne. They were killed by the Soviet troops who provoked a shooting in the centre of Riga on the night of January 20, just after the film was completed. Juris Podnieks was born in Riga in 1950, graduated from Moscow's Film Institute's Department of Cinematography in 1978 and died in an accident in 1992.