Riga IFF: Kino Veritas Universal Converter

This year’s Riga IFF retrospective program “In Kino Veritas” includes several films from the Copoli dynasty – created by Francis Ford Kopola, Eleonor Copola, Sofia Copola. Movies that serve as a history lesson and a mirror for the world today.

While living and working in the film industry in California, the presence of the Copoli clan is felt strong – its relatives are found in the fields in the field, San Francisco is still a studio founded by Patriarch Francis Ford Ford Copol. American Zoetropeand in the ownership of his vines, I have come to see the exhibit dedicated to Copola films on the evening of the west coast. While the original of the properties, the originals of the scenarios and the prestigious awards (including five Oscar) Plejade, thoughts focus on cinematic as the factor that flows the most powerful in the collective consciousness of the world americana – symbols of American culture, history and identity;

In particular, Francis Ford Copola’s films are expressively illustrated by commercially and artistically influential Hollywood myth creation machinery, which is built in the world of references to cinema and in the popular culture today,

Their universalism and influence reaches borders and languages.
American -born American offspring, educated at the prestigious University of California (UCLA) Phrase fords copola (1939) belong to the American new wave, or young Hollywood (In the 1960s and 1970s) – a movement characterized by a strict study system control, creative freedom and less censorship, cinema language cultivation in its author’s handwriting. Alongside Copol, directors George Lucas, Martin Skorsese, Robert Oltman, Peter Bogdanovich made films for a new, educated audience, in the themed arsenal, the spirit of daring and his era, depicting political issues, resistance movements, subcultures.

Copola started its creative activity New Hollywood Father, B-category film cult director Roger Korman, working in the horror genre, but the new director conquered the recognition when he took the director for the director for financial motives mafia saga – Movies Godfather / The Godfather (1972) and Godfather 2 The godfather: part II (1974). It cannot be said that Copola has launched a gangster film genre that has been known since silent cinema, Godfather Films can rather be considered an American national epic – this is made by both storytelling and stylistics in dealing with a fairy tale about the birth of capitalism and organized crime, the formation of America as a nation through cruelty immigrant stories and the central symbol of the American dream. Significant is also Godfather impression on cinema development in the coming decades; Along with this cinema, next to heavyweights, as Marlon Brando, became famous actors facial Robert de Niro and Als Patchino.

Absolute opposite Godfather is the Ford Ford Copola movie included Riga IFF in the program. Saruna / The Conversation (1974) There is a project that the director has cherished since the late 1960s, a radically conceptual psychological tension film, whose central themes thicken from tracking to moral responsibility. The protagonist of the film (in the outstanding portrayal of Gina Hekman) begins the story as the maximum emotionally alienated character, whose task is to only get as flawlessly as possible for spying. However, he soon becomes obsessed with his own role in the lives of tracked people, realizing that they are in danger.

Film Conversation One can also be considered prophetic because it came out on the screens at a time when the news was dominated by the Votergeit scandal, the placement of illegal hearing devices, organized by the government of the then US President Richard Nixon at his opponent’s Democratic Headquarters; This scandal led to the resignation of the president. With this movie, Copola, the author of the scenario, is essentially an heir to Orwell’s dystopic world. Talk The main character enters the lives of others, remaining unnoticed; Alienated landscapes and silent interiors of the San Francisco urban environment serve as a background for his anonymity. This person in a gray suit, when collectively collecting data, is a forerunner for today, when, as a result of the rapid development of technology, observation is engaged in individuals, corporations, governments, raising suspicions and even paranoia, which follows the possibilities of privacy for robbery and constant life in orvelic.

In terms of intertextuality, close parallels Talk Narrative and theme pulled with Michelangelo Antonioni cult film Enlargement / Blow-up (1966), centered on the question of the trusted or unreliable nature of the image / photos, while Brian de Palma, the director who has filled almost all his works in extremely really references to other films, the thriller Bang / Blow Out (1981) borrows motifs both from Enlargementboth Talks.

Godfather The film thematic axis turns around the family and money theme, Conversation play the power provided by information but Copola’s most virtuoso job Modern apocalypse / Apocalypse Now (1979) focus on another important element of American identity – war and the cuffs of imperialism. Based Joseph Conrad’s Tall Story The heart of darkness / Heart of Darkness (1899) In motives (Copola is a screenwriter), the film was moved from the 19th century Africa to the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, and Martin’s Captain Willard Willard, who goes to the mission of killing the Rules of Rules, Colonel Kurz (Marlon Brando.

The central threads of Konrad’s work – exploration of the darkest depths of the psyche, the colonialism, the positions of power – have created a great outfit in a meaningless war, where a journey on the river from southern Vietnam borrowes an ancient Greek epic Odyssey The motifs, but equally well-drawn, with the concept of mono-myth described by Joseph Campbell, which claims that all the culture of the world in religions and myths are the same archetypal narrative elements, while the hero’s journey is equally characterized by real, physical danger and mental path to revelation.

Showing a movie at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, the director said the film was not par Vietnam War, so and The Vietnam War, thus expressing his efforts to portray the madness, horror and the introduction of the psychedelic elements of America in Southeast Asia. This Copola film also has an epic opera scope of addressing the opera world close to the topics (madness and death), as well as illustrating American culture -specific megalomania, characterized by hrestomatic film introductory staff with burning jungle The Doors Sound rhythms, death media Valkirs – an army helicopter – an air raid on Wagner’s music and blood stinging rituals in the Cambodian jungle. The film was 70’s US Film Flower, including Dennis Hoper, Harrison Ford and Lawrence Fishburn.

Speaking of Modern apocalypse In the mass consciousness and cinema history, the mythical amounts of the film have been raised by reception conditions, which essentially reflect the main themes of the film – the eternal conflicts of civilization and nature, the opposite of the West and the East, physical and mental distress. The film -making process in the Philippine jungle in an intimate documentary film diary format, combining filmed scenes and audio recordings, captured by Copola’s wife Eleonor Copola, whose filmed material was originally intended for the publicity of the Hollywood studio. Hearts of darkness: director’s apocalypse / Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991) In documenting the financial, logistical and emotional forces of exhaustion, echoed with another famous documentary – Lesa Blanka The burden of dreams / Burden of Dreams (1982) depicting the Duke of Werner’s Duke Fickaraldo / Fitzcarraldo (1982) Admission to the Amazon jungle. Like this film, Eleonor’s documentary work is an outstanding portrait of the director’s autocratic vision process and existential doubts that accompanied it.

The fact that almost all of the Copol family relatives are related to cinema is a reflection on the impact of nepotism in the creative industries. Francis nephew Nicholas Cage’s career is not required, especially his roles in the 80s and 90s. years in films. Francis’ sister, Taas, has portrayed images Godfather In the trilogy and Rocky / Rocky Films (1976-1990), her son Jason Schwartzman known as Vesa Anderson’s work it is. Anderson often also works together by Francis’ son Roman Copola; He as a producer, director, screenwriter has been in films of almost all clans, while Francis granddaughter Jia Kopola is the director (The last show girl / The Last Showgirl2024).

A pronounced resemblance to the films directed by Sofia Copola, daughter of Valda Francis – fragile variations on the perception of the world from the perspective of young girls and women, loneliness, melancholic longing, alienation, suppressed sexuality, identity search, growth; – All this is often viewed through a dream -like trance lens film in the visual design. The essence of this topic is Copola’s first full -length movie The suicide of virginss / The Virgin Suicides (1999) with her often -host actress Kirsten Dansts in the lead role.

American Zoetrope Under the auspices of the story of a limited life of five new sisters in the traditional 70 -year -old American family is accompanied by ambient electronic music soundtrack Air In the performance that only exacerbates the obsession of nostalgic, adolescence and the long full atmosphere. The main character of the film is depicted as essential beings, creating a link with a fairy tale and fantasy genre, where the prisoner prisoners are waiting for redeeming in the form of a romantic turn. There are also close summons with the Australian classic Peter’s Cult Mystery movie Picnic at the hanging rock / picnic at hanging rock (1975) and Copolas’ own later film Apburtie / The Beguiled (2017) – The activities of both films take place in the 19th century, where the heroine led the day in remote girls’ boarding schools, summer glow, virgin white outfits, religion and social norms. Both films, although rooted in specific literary sources and historical period, depict isolation, anxiety and emotion as a universal experience of young women, and death as one of the possible keys.

Interesting and balancing is the fact that – in the radical opposite of the masculine topics of Francis Ford Copola, the author of the Sofia Copola is so consistently focused on such diametal anti -fits.

The story of the Copoli continues.

Program In Kino Truth Sessions on weekends – 18.10. and 19.10, 25.10. and 26.10.
More information Riga IFF on the website Here.