1949–1991
✕ Murdered
A documentary filmmaker who recorded Latvia's independence struggle from the ground
On the evening of 20 January 1991 he carried his camera to the barricades to show the world OMON's assault on the Interior Ministry, and was shot dead while filming at Bastejkalns.
Andris Slapiņš was a Latvian documentary filmmaker and cinematographer who worked at Riga Film Studio. His films explored Livonian culture as well as Latvian history and social life, showing how documentary could connect suppressed memory with present struggle. He was killed in Riga on 20 January 1991 while filming the attack on the Interior Ministry, and the footage he helped create became part of the international memory of Latvia's independence movement.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1971–1976Cameraman, Riga Film Studio
- 1976Graduated from VGIK, cameramen department
- 1978Cinematographer, Riga
- 1983Documentary director, Riga Film Studio
- 1988Director and cinematographer, The Field of Hopes
- 1989Director, Letters from Latvia
- 1990Cinematographer, Homeland, directed by Juris Podnieks
- 1991Killed while filming the attack on Riga's Interior Ministry
Related historical events
A diploma film that first put the Livonians on camera
Slapiņš first made his mark early in his career behind the camera. He had worked as a cameraman since 1971 and graduated from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in 1977, but in 1975 he had already made his diploma film, Lībiešu dziesmas (Livonian Songs). In Latvian film history it is recorded as the first film devoted to the Livonians after the Second World War. The Livonians, a Finnic-speaking minority on the Baltic coast, had dwindled to a few hundred people, and their culture had long gone unrecorded. Slapiņš put their language and way of life on screen, centring on traditional song. The axis of interest that reappears in his later work starts here: in 1988 The Field of Hopes (Cerību lauki), Riga Film Studio's first co-produced documentary, examined old culture through parallels between ancient Baltic and Celtic traditions. He became a documentary director at Riga Film Studio in 1983 and made more than eighteen documentaries in his lifetime. The Livonian Songs was the point from which he chose the culture of a small people and suppressed memory as his own subject rather than remaining a studio cameraman, a line that connects to the singing revolution he filmed on the barricades at the end of his life.