The best film seen in 2012?
The Year 2012 in Review
25/12/2012
Illustration by Sabīne Moore
Mārtiņš Vanags, writer for Rīgas Laiks magazine, Latvia
Holy Motors by Leos Carax and, to a lesser extent, Pēdējā tempļa hronikas (Chronicles of the Last Temple), by Dāvis Sīmanis.
Christian Andersson, artist, Sweden
Hmm, tricky, it wasn't really a film year for me. British TV series Black Mirror had its moments for sure. The surrealistic highlight might have been watching Beyond the black rainbow with a severe fever in a small room in Basel. That one came too close...
Riivo Anton, entrepreneur, advisor and investor, Estonia
1+1 – obvious.
August Künnapu, artist, Estonia
Marley by Kevin Macdonald.
Keta Gūtmane, fashion designer, Latvia
Holy Motors by Leos Carax.
Helēna Demakova, art historian, Latvia
The film of the year was the hour-long The Radiant, a film about the nuclear power plant tragedy in Fukushima, which was made by the British artist group Otolith Group, and shown at Kassel's Documenta (in the Kulturbahnhof area). The film can't be called a documentary; it contains all kinds of things, including a study on the subject of “things we can now do with a moving image”. I thought that this group was my own little secret since the beginning of 2011, and something which only students are taught about. I was very surprised to hear that they were nominated for the Turner Prize.
Maria Arusoo, curator and executive manager of Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia
Paradise:Faith by Ulrich Seidl.
Vita Zaman, art director of VIENNAFAIR, Austria
Melancholia.
Olga Temnikova, owner of Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Estonia
Rewatching Tarkovsky's Andrey Rublev at Esna Manor with some of our artists and collectors.
Marge Monko, artist, Estonia
Francoise Ozon's In the House, a provoking and captivating approach to storytelling.
Karin Laansoo, director of Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center, Estonia
Argo.
Kaspars Podnieks, artist, Latvia
Furry Vengeance (2010).
Zaiga Gaile, architect, Latvia
I was very lucky with the selection at the Baltijas Pērle film festival this year; in a short period of time, I got to see three very good films: M. Haneke's Love, U. Seidl's Paradise: Love, and S. McQueen's Shame.
Darius Miksys, artist, Lithuania
Time Together by Mark Areal Waller.
Kaido Ole, artist, Estonia
The Intouchables. It should be a bad movie but it wasn´t. Respect.
Kaspars Vanags, cultural theoretician, Latvia
Elena by Andrei Zvyagintsev.
Indriķis Ģelzis, artist, Latvia
Traffic (1971) by Jacques Tati.
Christina Steinbrecher-Pfandt, art director of VIENNAFAIR, Austria
Bond.
Jacob Fabricius, director of Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark
Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn.
Sara Arrhenius, director of the Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, gives you an unusual insight in the work and thoughts of an extraordinary artist. It is very different from the conventional artist portrait and because of that it actually tells us something important about art and its making.
Ieva Iltnere, painter, Latvia
Dokumentālists (The Documentarian) (2012) by Ivars Zviedrs.
Andra Neiburga, author and director of Neiburgs hotel, Latvia
Pēdējā tempļa hronikas (Chronicles of the Last Temple) by Dāvis Sīmanis.
Krišs Salmanis, artist, Latvia
I don't remember the film, but in its place, I'll put Alfred Schnittke's concert for piano and string orchestra, with the solo by Reinis Zariņš, at the Great Guild. It made me dizzy.
Andris Vītoliņš, artist, Latvia
I have two surprises. The first is 1979's Being There. Wonderfully contemporary cinema! The second one is a documentary, The Ambassador, which I saw at the “Balle” movie theater in Liepāja. It amazingly reveals the structure of today's civilization!
