An unusual event will take place in the Vegetable Pavilion of the Riga Central Market within the contemporary culture forum White Night on the evening of 5 September, starting from 9 PM: the Cinema on the Wall organized by Riga Film Museum.

The Cinema on the Wall consists of 30-minute video clips showing fragments from various films. Visitors to the Central Market will get a chance to see 14 different fragments from a total of 13 films. The video clips will provide insight into the evolution of the Riga Central Market and its surroundings: the Central Station, the station tunnels, the neighbourhood of the Coach Terminal and the Spīķeri Quarter. Thanks to the responsiveness of the sellers in the Vegetable Pavilion of the Central Market, visitors to the event will have an opportunity to shop at an unusual time as well as buy snacks and drinks to boost their energy for enjoying the culture throughout the White Night event.

Anatolijs Abramovs, Chairman of the Board of Riga Municipality JSC Riga Central Market, points out: “The Riga Central Market has a special charm and unique attractiveness, so it enjoys popularity not only among buyers, but also creative individuals who find and capture visually and emotionally saturated stories in the Central Market. This summer, audiences across Europe could watch the documentary about the Central Market from the Food Markets series, and just now we have had the creative team of the film Magic Kimono from Japan over in the market. Therefore, we have gladly supported the idea of Riga Film Museum to look back on the history of the market through the prism of arthouse cinema in the 85^th anniversary year of the Central Market.”

Agnese Logina, curator of Riga Film Museum, says the following on the underlying idea of the event: “When compiling a number of works of the past several years in the creation of the Riga cinema map, we decided to experiment with cinema screenings in the urban environment, showing fragments from Latvian films as close to their shooting locations as possible. The Cinema on the Wall event will take place in four venues during one evening, and one of them will be the Central Market.”

The image of the Central Market has been used for various purposes in the Latvian cinema. A number of films, such as Tās dullās Paulīnes dēļ (It’s All Pauline’s Fault) (1979, directed by Vija Beinerte), Cilvēki tur (People Out There) (2012, directed by Aiks Karapetjans) and Ābols upē (An Apple in the River) (1974, directed by Aivars Freimanis), show how people trade their belongings that have been obtained either legally or illegally, highlighting various bargaining techniques at different time periods.

Other films, such as Liekam būt (To Be Unwanted) (1976, directed by Aloizs Brenčs) and Baltie zvani (White Bells) (1961, directed by Ivars Kraulītis), use the neighbourhood of the Central Market to show Riga as a dynamic place and a big city, where people sometimes get lost and make mistakes, and these stories can have either a tragic ending or a happy one.

Yet most often, the fragments shown during the Cinema on the Wall present the Central Market as a background for development of relations. For example, Tauriņdeja (The Butterfly Dance) (1971, directed by Oļģerts Dunkers), Stari stiklā (Rays in the Glass) (1969, directed by Imants Krenbergs) and Šķēps un Roze (Spear and Rose) (1959, directed by Leonīds Leimanis) show couples in different periods of their relations among strangers in this dynamic place. The couples bargain and trade, while dealing with their relationships: who loves the other more, who has hurt the other more, who is lying and who is more truthful.

Venue: Vegetable Pavilion

Time: from 9 PM on 5 September to 1 AM on September 6

Admission is free.

You are most welcome to visit the Central Market at an unusual time and gain vivid impressions of the twists and turns of the history of cinema.