Baltic premiere
Black Velvet
A self-help film cocktail of 1/4 Riga Black Balsam and 3/4 champagne, with a dash of dark humour.
To film or not to film? What’s worthy of a film? How do you become a good director? These questions plague wannabe director Marta as she struggles to capture the strange images, worlds, characters and emotions that haunt her.
Strongly influenced by Lars von Trier and his film “Epidemic”, Marta feels that her life is pretty shitty. She imagines herself to be the best, convinced that she deserves a national award stolen from a real director, Liene, who makes a cameo appearance as a bloody, nasty boxer in “Lotus”. Marta dreams, pretends, manipulates and indulges in fantasies, committing a victimless crime through various cinematic mediums. We can only speculate how much of the biting sarcasm reflects Liene’s real life.
This witty, amusing and sexualised satire explores the delusions and turmoil behind the scenes of filmmaking, leading to naughty, embarrassing and poetically orgasmic illusions. This surreal journey includes Black Velvet and even a talkative Cat.
Edvinas Pukšta
Liene Linde (1986) is a Latvian film director, screenwriter, editor and educator. Has a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree in Film Directing from the Latvian Academy of Culture. Her short films “Fake Me A Happy New Year” (2012) and “Seven Awkward Sex Scenes” (2016) earned international acclaim and were awarded Latvian National Film Award “Lielais Kristaps”. In 2020, her debut documentary feature “Mothers and Others” came out (co-directed with Armands Začs) that received “Lielais Kristaps” for the Best Documentary Directing. She is an active essayist and film critic. Linde also teaches film directing and analysis at the National Film School of the Latvian Academy of Culture.
Klātbūtne (Mothers and Others, 2020, co-dir), Melnais samts (Black Velvet, 2024)
Award for Best Baltic Film, grant of 5000€ from Piletilevi
