Herz Frank
Biography
Herz Frank (17 January 1926- 3 March 2013) was one of the most famous documentary filmmakers of Latvia. At the beginning of 1960ies, he was among the first to establish the so-called Riga poetic documentary school – the Latvian “new wave”. Herz Frank’s filmography includes more than 80 films, many of which are considered classics of Latvian film history. One of his most-known works is Ten Minutes Older (1978), which he made together with Juris Podnieks and in which children's faces are observed during a puppet theatre performance. In 1992, Frank moved to Israel, while maintaining ties with Latvia. In 2001, he received the Lifetime contribution award by the Latvian National Film Awards 'Lielais Kristaps'.
Known For & Full Filmography2 Titles
Movie - 2018, 2h 15m • as Self (archive footage)
At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.
Movie - 1998, 2h 15m • as Self
“Like the right and left hand Your soul is close to my soul We are sealed shut, blissfully and warmly, Like the right and left wing…” The life and art of Pavel Kogan and Lyudmila Stanukinas, two famous Leningrad documentary filmmakers, can best be expressed by the Tsvetaeva stanza cited above. They are the main characters of this film, which their student Viktor Kossakovsky shot during Pavel Kogan’s final months. For Lyudmila Stanukinas, Lyalya, as those close to her called her, her husband was her only reason for existence. She was with him until the end and held onto his extinguishing life as much as she could.