baltijas ceļš.

Initially my ideas were mostly based around text, possibly due to the fact I found inspiration in experimental films such as Bradley Manning Had Secrets by Adam Butcher and Blue by Derek Jarman. I was also amazed by Dan Mace's The Sound of Silence due to its unusually fast tempo during its opening sequence. Theme-wise I wanted to explore something metaphorical up until very recently.


My previous idea had been to see how something beautiful could hurt a person, but after a chat and some soul-searching I decided to pursue an idea I had had for years.

This idea was to create something rather personal and important to me. I realise not many people know the history of the Baltic States, those being Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, but I do find it fun to bring up our painful stories whenever someone compares them to Russia, or forgets that the Soviet regime was not voluntary. Anyhow, my plan was to make everyone more aware of just what my home has been through.


Originally I used this idea in a short I did for the theme Personal and Political where I created a short piece that used online footage of the people participating in The Baltic Way and created an audio piece that, whilst mostly muted, explained the current situation in Latvia from my point of view.

 The Baltic Way 

In 1940 the Baltic states were occupied by the Soviet Union which had previously agreed upon it with Nazi Germany. The agreement was entered into on 23 August 1939 in Moscow and was entirely secret. This document is called the Hitler–Stalin Pact or the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.  

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At the end of the 1980s the effects of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact were still sharply present in the Baltic states. The occupation continued but the USSR denied the existence of the Pact and continuously asserted that the Baltic states had voluntarily joined the Soviet Union. On 23 August 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the inhabitants of the three Baltic states demanded public acknowledgement of the Pact’s secret protocols and the renewal of the independence of the Baltic states.  

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At 19:00 on 23 August 1989 approximately two million inhabitants of the Baltic states joined hands forming a human chain from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius. The Baltic Way was organised by the national movements of the Baltic states: the Estonian Rahvarinne, the Latvian Popular front of Latvia and the Lithuanian Sajūdis. The participants gathered in the cities and villages where the campaign was to take place or drove to the less inhabited Baltic territories where the Baltic Way was to wind through. [1]

[1] The History of The Baltic Way (2014) At: http://www.thebalticway.eu/en/history/

(Accessed 09.03.2018)