The 20th century dreamt about utopia, but instead it experienced tragedies — a look at the artist and playwright Raimonds Staprāns’ nearly century-long experience of trying to define living and statehood. We split the personality of the San Francisco-based Latvian artist into three parts: a brilliant painter; an unusual playwright; and a sharp, original observer of Latvia. We take one of his paintings, “Barn with the Red Door”, and construct an exact replica; and take the characters from Staprans’ plays and ask actors to perform the roles. Keeping in mind the symbolically charged image of the Red Barn, we deliberately cause arguments between the actors, the director and the crew about the historic motivations of the characters, as well as alternative actions or decisions that they could have taken but did not.

Type of work: Film
Genre: Documentary
Stage: In production
Producers: Uldis Cekulis (Company VFS Films)
Looking for: Co-producers, co-financiers, sales agent, festivals
Contacts: uldis@vfs.lv