Why to visit the Riga Film Museum?

A bit of history

In 1988, after a long period of bureaucratic red tape in Riga, a new space for cinephiles was opened – the Riga Film Museum. 

Throughout 35 years of its existence, the museum has replaced ten leaders who popularized local cinema with all their might. The museum itself constantly moved from place to place, from one building to another, until it recently returned to its original address at Peitavas Street 10. 

The Riga Cinema Museum is the only space in the country where the memory of Latvian filmmakers is kept. Nowadays you can see information on long past exhibitions on the museum’s website: with their help you can, for example, learn interesting details about the life of Sergei Eisenstein, get acquainted with the animated films of Latvian filmmakers Rose Stiebra and Ansis Berzinsh.

What’s in the museum today?

The museum presents a permanent exhibition “Behind the screen”. Guests of the museum can get acquainted with the process of creating a movie and observe the devices that were used for filming. 

The Riga Film Museum has a separate space dedicated to the art of animated movies. Here you can not only learn about various types of animation, whether it is puppet, cartoon, drawn or digital, but also try your hand at creating your own animated film in a frame-by-frame technique at a master class.

There are no limits for the fantasy in the Cinema Museum Workshop: you can create a film according to your own script, or you can take an already familiar plot as a basis. And while visitors will have two hours to work on their film, the museum staff will conduct a brief excursion into the history of animated cinema.

However, in the Workshop, you can sign up not only for the creation of animation, but also create a unique souvenir in the Printing Shop. At the master class, visitors can print on T-shirts or other clothing items with touching or witty quotes from Latvian films. Printing your design (even on your own things) is available to both adults and children. During the master class, you can also listen to a tour about the museum or watch a film from their collection.

Cinema lecture “Not allowed to not know” 

Along with exhibition activities, the museum encourages and develops educational programs. In 2023, the Cinema Museum celebrated the 18th season of the program “Not allowed to not know”. In addition to watching significant films for both the cinema history of Latvia and the world, the audience also participates in discussions with film critics. This year, together with the Splendid Palace cinema, the Riga Film Museum will hold a number of lectures, drawing attention to the musical genre.

As the curator of the event Dace Chaure notes, musicals are an undeservedly underestimated genre in the history of cinema. Perhaps no other film format can be heard in so many contradictory statements. Many people hate musical films, where everyone sings and dances in seemingly inappropriate situations. However, in fact, it is the stylization of this genre that requires the viewer to abandon the skeptical position to accept the rules of the game of the universe that opens on the screen.

The program of the 18th season of the film lecture hall called “One Beat” this year was opened by the American masterpiece “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) by Victor Fleming (this movie is still mistakenly called the first full-length color film, a beautiful legend about a beautiful fairy tale). In April, a screening of one of Bollywood’s most successful musical love stories, “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (1995), took place.

May will be more saturated, and those who want it, will have time to watch and discuss the three musicals. On May 3, a screening of Latvian director Alois Branch’s “Large Amber” (1972) will take place. By the way, on the museum’s website, under section “Games” there’s a fascinating interactive project based on the cinema of this director.

On May 17, the Splendid Palace will screen Shantal Ackerman’s film “Golden Eighties” (1986) about consumerism, feminism, and Jewish identity through the lens of a shopping mall. On the last day of the month of May, the first film that saw Barbra Streisand on a screen will be shown – “Funny Girl” (1968). The lecture season closes in June with the story of a crazy transvestite in the cult film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975).

Film club “25th frame”

Recently, a new tradition was established in the museum – to arrange meetings of the 25th frame cinema club to talk about cinema, exchange opinions and expand the horizons. Within the framework of the film club, visitors watch not only novelties of national cinema, but also Latvian films that have become classics. Together with the curators of the event, guests can understand the subtleties of cinema and see interesting details hidden by the filmmakers between the frames.

The main advantage of the film club is the opportunity to participate in discussions outside of social networks and Internet communities. The meetings of the “25th frame” gather people who show interest and love for cinema. But no need to assume that these events are suitable only for experienced cinephiles. On the contrary, the purpose of such an event is to exchange ideas regardless of the background in this area and learn something new about the interesting world of cinema.