Bridges of Time

Several words could be spent on the rise of poetic documentary cinema in the baltic states during the '60s, often simply described as the Baltic New Wave, rarely at the center of film history discourse. the approach that filmmakers like Herz Frank, Uldis Brauns, Henriks Šablevičus, Andres Sēts, Aivars Freimanis, Ivars Seleckis, Roberts Verba and Mark Soosaars have found a unique approach in the cinema of reality, despite the limitations imposed under the Soviet regime. Such a largely overlooked cinematic movement would definitely prompt a didactic-expositional approach. Yet, Audrius Stonys opts, very fittingly, for the completely opposite.

In an effort to convey the attitudes that this cinematic reality adopted to escape the Soviet censorhip, the film prefers silence, disconnected and evocative sentences, images and comparisons between the past and the present. In what is paradoxically Stonys' most expositional documentary film, no specific information is conveyed through words. The intense stare of Aivars Freimanis in the camera, his discomforted reaction at the length of the shot, elements that describe somehow his character as an auteur. Therein lies the power of Bridges of Time, in succeeding at presenting a whole wave of filmmakers, and express their personalities, their filmaking work, without traditional interview formats, but through sounds and images of a more poetic making.

Through the account of a cinematic movement, Stonys' film is however a deeper endeavour, that of representing the passage of time and its mystifying power: places that fade, characters that have grown old, films that become forgotten. In many ways, Bridges of Time fits perfectly in Stonys' filmography, centered often on the effects of the passage of time, on the relationship with a fading memory.

Bridges of Time serves as a starting point, as a film that introduces to a form of cinema that feels deeply connected to the medium's most elevated aspirations, and that presents a filmmaking reality that is largely overseen without demystifying its beauty. 

RATING: 4/5

Original title: Laika tilti

Directed by: Audrius Stonys, Kristīne Briede

Country: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

Year: 2018

Length: 80 min.

Premiere: KVIFF 2018

Availability: Klassiki Online, Dafilms

Synopsis: past and present of the filmmakers of the Baltic Poetic Documentary cinema from the '60s and '70s, the mentors of filmmaker Audrius Stonys.