FILM DIRECTOR NUMBER 1
Mārtiņš Slišāns
I would like to begin my thoughts on the contribution of Laila Pakalniņa to Latvian culture by considering a film which, at first sight, is by no means a work of first-rate significance in her filmography. A film that hasn't been included in the Venice Film Festival competition programme - that Olympic peak of cinema, attained by Laila Pakalniņa's second feature film, "The Python" (2003). Neither has the film I wish to discuss been screened at the star-studded gathering of cinema gourmets and snobs that is the Cannes Film Festival - as happened to her first fiction film, "The Shoe" (1998) and to her documentaries of previous years, "The Mail" (1995) and "The Ferry" (1996). It is special only in terms of its "unspecialness". Just like everything Laila Pakalniņa does.
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