After the premiere. Sounds and perfumes

Latvian director Elizabete Gricmane introduces the composer and musician Juris Kulakovs at the beginning of the film as a man who made history. The man whose music inspired the generation that took part in the restoration of Latvia's independence, and at the same time gave them the opportunity to be born in the already free country. Together with director Ramunė Rakauskaitė, she invites us to take a look at the life of this man of history in the documentary film “Art Born in Agony”, which premiered at Scanorama.

I must admit that before the film I did not know who Juris Kulakovs and his band Pērkons were. I have no doubt that Latvians themselves will see other recognisable faces on the screen. Perhaps their eyes and ears will ‘catch’ more names, more texts, more details, and they will know what happened, for example, with the band's fans and the train carriages, and why Kulakovs himself does not seem eager to talk about it. These are the little privileges that local audiences always have. But the directors will make sure that this documentary journey is also easily understandable for the rest of the audience, who are hearing Kulakovs' name for the first time.

“Art Born in Agony” is, of course, first and foremost, the story of one man's life and work. Relatives, friends and colleagues talk about Kulakovs, and sometimes Kulakovs says something about himself, although he doesn't waste words. These conversations are edited with archive footage from concerts and music videos. Despite the fact that they are constantly interjected into the narrative, and there is jumping back and forth in time (there is not much of clear chronological order, except maybe at the end), the dramatic structure works here by bringing everything together, where no shot or memory seems random, out of place.

However, through Kulakovs' story - the Latvian poet's poems he keeps, which had also become the lyrics of the songs, the hints about the bannings of the band or instructions before going abroad, or even the somewhat funny details about how one of Kulakovs' songs became an "elm dance" in Germany (a meditative-healing dance in which people sway from side to side while standing in a circle and holding hands) - the cultural and historical context also comes into focus. The directors here allow themselves to trust the viewer, without resorting to historians' narratives or still pictures with text to explain the situation (and without giving the film didactic ballast). The audience may not have heard of Kulakovs or his band, but to understand what the characters are talking about, you need to know something about the social and political life of the previous era.

Director Gricmane has spent a lot of time observing and filming Kulakovs - she is often seen in the shot with the musician. These are not just conversations. She looks with curiosity at his personal belongings, at his perfume collection - which he had started to buy instead of alcohol - and she cuts and dyes his hair (somewhat symbolically, this motif is constantly inserted throughout the film). And although we don't get to see Kulakovs buying another car (the director as if jokingly says that he thought it was a delicate matter and he didn't want to take her with him), she does go with him to buy a piano – there is no shortage of keyboard instruments in his house either.  She seems to get so close over the years of filming that Kulakovs not only learns to ignore the camera watching them, but also not to treat the director as a stranger.

But while Gricmane's admiration is obvious, she doesn't hide it in the voice-over comments at the beginning of the film. But she doesn't stumble where this might happen with a director who romanticises her protagonist. There are no gods in the film - just rock and roll. Neither the directors, nor Kulakovs himself, nor the other interviewees create a myth out of him - although all parties involved could do so. The directors do not pull shocking confessions from his lips (and he could certainly tell more than just about rock and roll), nor do they provoke. They do not pry into the feelings of his daughter, who mentions her father's constant masks and how he did not even fly over to her for her wedding. Nobody tries to make him a political martyr or a historical hero – even though all the circumstances are favourable for that. On the screen, he is simply a human being who loved music very much (more than he loved women and alcohol - or at least so he says). And that gives the film a lot of lightness. Such lightness like the clouds of perfume sprayed into the air in the final, almost ritualistic scene of the friends saying goodbye to Juris.