Motherland

Motherland is a documentary of memories and images, chronicling the lives of two Latvian grandmothers in suburban Australia. Filmed in both Brisbane, Australia, and the Baltic nation of Latvia, Motherland explores the fragile relationship that refugees and their children have with their country and culture of origin. The central characters in the film are the director's two grandmothers, Irene Treijs and Gaida Stenders. Both are women in there eighties and have lived in Queensland since they fled the Soviet invasion of Latvia in 1944. We look at their lives in present-day Brisbane, and through their memories we return to the women's past lives in both Australia and Latvia. The film is a portrait of the grandmothers, their family, and their beliefs, presented through reconstructions of the director's and his grandmothers' memories. Motherland reveals how a culture survives in the imagination of three generations of exiles, fourteen thousand miles from their homeland. Finally, the film surfaces in contemporary Latvia and looks at the lives of the grandmothers' friends and relatives, who have endured almost forty years of Soviet occupation. This film will also participate in the Global Motion programme. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)