Maris Martinsons: Talking Movies

When aspiring Latvian TV and film director Maris Martinsons met fellow Latvian Linda Krukle on a holiday trip, sparks flew. He persuaded her to move to neighboring Lithuania, which had been his home since 1991, and run ARTeta, a small production company he had set up. Today, the company has the biggest studio space for TV and film productions in the Baltic states, located in Tarandė near Vilnius. As we pulled up in the car, we could see construction workers busy building new office space for visiting producers. In January 2008, the company premieres its new movie “Loss” (Nereikalingi žmonės), starring Lithuanian rock star and actor Andrius Mamontovas and written and directed by Maris.

A large, privately owned TV and film production company is hard to find in the Baltics. How did it start?

[Maris] I founded ARTeta as an independent production company in 1994 together with a business partner, Violeta Kilšauskienė. We both worked at LTV, the state-run TV broadcaster. After some years of steady growth, we realized that we should buy, not rent, our cameras and other equipment. After that, we understood that we needed our own premises and studios. Now we have three stages, which as a complex is the biggest in the Baltic states, private or state-run. It’s also true that many companies use converted warehouses, whereas we’ve built everything from scratch, specially designed for the purpose.

What’s that you’re building out front?

[Maris] It will be a set of offices so we can welcome more producers here, from Lithuania and elsewhere. It’s common for one producer to shoot several TV shows at the same time. [Linda] We have a very casual working environment – they come up to the office, then go down and shoot. It’s a convenient location for them, no traffic jams, no parking problems. Some TV shows need an audience and it’s easy to bus them in.

“Loss” is about to get its premiere, yet some of the promising scripts you developed before that are still in pre-production? Why is that?

[Maris] One of them, “Fredericco”, tells Lithuania’s legendary historical love story of Barbora Radvilaitė and King Sigismund. It received support from the European Union’s MEDIA Plus program, but it is proving very hard to produce. It’s a huge production for Lithuania, with crowd scenes and costumes. It’s in development and waiting for when the main roles can be cast. We are hoping that Gérard Depardieu will take a cameo role.

[Linda] Such a film would clearly promote Lithuania and Vilnius internationally – this is one of Lithuania’s greatest love stories – but there has been no interest from the public sector, only from the EU. It’s strange, given the potential for wide distribution outside the country. So now we have to think whether to change the story and the location.

Movies made in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have so far mostly been hugely disappointing. Do you think “Loss” will be any different?

We made “Loss” in an incredibly short time period considering it’s an international project shot in both Lithuania and Ireland. But it was a passionate affair. We really believe that it could change attitudes to films made in the Baltic states. Then more support for other film projects would come. “Loss” didn’t get any support from the state either, but a good film would change attitudes.

[Maris] I saw the completed film for the first time yesterday. I’m very happy with it. It’s everything I imagined it should be. It could change our understanding of what “Lithuanian cinema” means. Directors in Lithuanian and Latvia make films in the old style, but I think the times are changing. It’s a strange situation, in both Lithuania and Latvia – a small, closed circle of directors and producers always sitting around the Ministry of Culture, sharing funding between themselves. Why should they give money to a company outside their circle, even if it’s for a film about a wonderful Lithuanian legend like “Fredericco”?

[Linda] We are a Lithuanian company, with a Lithuanian staff , a Lithuanian crew, and the story is Lithuanian. The company’s money stays in Lithuania. Yet Maris and I are Latvian and so our projects are not really considered.

Where did the idea for “Loss” come from?

[Maris] The idea came when I was at the Montreal World Film Festival, where our first film “Anastasia” (2006) was screened – the first Lithuanian film to participate in 30 years of the festival’s existence. Montreal is one of the most prestigious and controversial film festivals, picking up films from all over the world. This experience gave me the inspiration to create stories with several countries involved, with plots happening across borders. The Baltic states are so small and the world is so large.

[Linda] Maris then wrote the script in just a few weeks. We found the crew, cast the leading roles and went Ireland for the location scouting. Inspired by Ireland, we made few changes to the script. By June we were in post-production editing the film – and our second son was born the same month!

[Maris] “Loss” brings together two separate stories, as in the idea of “six degrees of separation” – if a person is one “step” away from each person he knows, and two “steps” away from each person who is known by these acquaintances, then everyone is no more than six “steps” away from every person on Earth. An event that occurred 26 years ago, a freak car accident, influences the destinies of six people. But although the accident changes each of them, they still have the power to change their future. But most of them can’t. I won’t give away the plot, but it also brings in the issues of emigration and adoption. The star, musician Andrius Mamontovas, who has played Hamlet in Eimuntas Nekrošius’ atmospheric theater production all around the world, also created the film’s soundtrack. That should become available on CD, and a DVD of the film will appear ųwith English subtitles in May. Unfortunately the cinema release in Lithuania will not have English subtitles.

How did you come to be here, Maris? Why are you not living in Latvia?

Like so many others, I fell in love in Vilnius. I have a son aged 16. When I first came in 1991, I didn’t realize I would stay for so long. It was very easy to adapt. That was the year the Baltic countries regained their independence and everything was new. Now I am remarried, and with the feature films starting to make a name, everything is starting anew once again.

[Linda] It has been easy for me to adapt to life in Lithuania too. Our first son was born two months after I arrived in 2003 – he was the very first Latvian citizen to be born in Lithuania who is registered here – and we have just had a second baby. Motherhood was already something new for me and this helped me adapt to a new place.

How did you meet?

Before 2003, I was working for the Latvian rural tourism association Lauku Celotajs, or Countryside Traveler. We first met in Istanbul in 2000, where I organized a trip for travel agents, and enjoyed chatting to each other, but we didn’t exchange contact details. Then, two years later, completely by chance, we bumped into each other in Dubai. We felt it must be a sign – two Latvians meeting twice by chance in foreign countries. Although we now have two children of our own, we are still close to Maris’ first son, who is a very talented young guitar player. We travel a lot, either with all the family or just the two of us. When we’re in London we try to see plays and shows. We recently saw the musical “Billy Elliott.” It made us realize how talented kids have so many more opportunities in other countries. In Lithuania, you can be a famous basketball player or a scientist, but there are very few chances to learn how to be creative in a professional sense. At least young people have the freedom to travel – they can get experience abroad, and Lithuania will gain from it.

Do you miss Latvia?

[Maris] Sometimes we make the three-hour drive from Vilnius to Osiris, our favorite restaurant in Riga, then drive home again. But it’s really no different to if we were living in Liepaja – the time spent on the road to Riga is the same. A lot of time has passed and Riga and its people have changed, and we’re changing too because we’re here.

[Linda] Violeta said recently that when she talks to Maris, who speaks Lithuanian fluently, she speaks with an accent. He writes his personal notes in Lithuanian, with a smattering of Latvian. There is some technical terminology where it’s hard to find the right words. We miss Latvia, of course, but Lithuania has been a good home to us.