Lost Theatre

Latvia, 2024, 70 minutes

Director : Daria Violina, Sergey Pavlovsky

Cast: Guna Zariņa, Ģirts Ķesteris, Māra Ķimele, Dāvis Sīmanis, Sergey Nikolaevich and others.

The winter of 1937 is remembered not only for its severe frosts and the overachievement in the production of cast iron and steel. On the evening of December 8th, the audience at the "Skatuve" theatre, performing in Moscow on Pushkin Square, was astonished by a bold directorial decision for that time: there were no men involved in the play. All male roles were portrayed by women! We can only speculate about the thoughts of the audience in that hall. The dramatic details of that evening and the subsequent fate of the entire troupe only emerged 80 years later.

Meanwhile, the heavy curtain fell for the last time, concealing the vanished theatre.

Over the millennia, from the inception of ancient theatre to the present day, it seems that everything has been said about it! Paradoxically, this, the most vibrant of all art forms, has changed the least over the centuries.

Of course, forms have evolved and debates have raged, but no era and no state has been without theatre. Worlds collapsed, borders were redrawn, wars erupted, and regimes fell, yet theatre endured and only grew stronger...

History has preserved for us the great names and timeless stories. However, there were also smaller theatres, almost forgotten. One of them operated in Moscow in the last century. It was called "Skatuve" in Latvian.

The history of this theatre and all those associated with it could easily serve as the foundation for an ancient Greek tragedy or a modern detective story.

In a certain sense, the film, whose first special screening will take place at the "Baltic Pearl" festival, is constructed in the rather rare genre of docu- detective. The incredible biographies of famous Latvian actors and directors, whose fates were crushed by Stalin's repressions, will be examined not only by historians in the film but also portrayed on screen by contemporary stars such as Guna Zariņa, Ģirts Ķesteris, Inese Pudža, and others. The mystery of another tragic figure, director Anna Lācis, will be unveiled by her granddaughter, director Māra Ķimele.

The film features new perspectives on the eternal conflict between the Artist and the authorities from a diverse group of contributors, including renowned film director Dāvis Sīmanis and eminent theatre critic Sergey Nikolaevich.

Maria Leiko, Osvalds Glaznieks, Anna Lācis, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Solomon Mikhoels, Walter Benjamin... Riga, Berlin, Moscow... Revolutions, wars, and personal dramas where theatre turned out to be greater than life itself. The stage. Skatuve. The story of this "Lost Theatre" is nearly 100 years old, yet sometimes it feels as if it could happen again today...

*Following the film, a discussion with the creators and participants of the project is scheduled.

Original language: Russian

Simultaneous translation: Latvian