Film director Laima Žurgina belongs to the post-war generation. When Laima was a year old, her father, the writer Jānis Grīns, and her mother, the sculptor Lucija Otīlia Jurgin, each stayed on their side of the Iron Curtain and never met again. In 1944, the father fled to Sweden, but Laima and her mother remained in Latvia. Preservation of people for history became their daughter’s life mission.
She began her journey into cinema already during her studies, later she continued to actively create both film magazines and documentary films, as well as succinct recordings of eras and personalities. At the turn of the 80s and 90s, her films and the director herself traveled a lot around the world, representing Latvian cinema. The world’s leading women’s film festivals played an important role here. The documentary filmmaker is one of the “golden generation” of Latvian documentary cinema, she has produced approximately fifty documentary and scientific cinema and video films, as well as more than a hundred film magazines.
This spring, film director, screenwriter and producer Laima Žurgina was awarded the Order of Three Stars.
How does it feel to receive the award, is there an even greater desire to do and continue?
Laima Jurgin: The desire is already there. There should be strength and energy to realize those wishes. I have already mentioned the film (a film with the working title “White Sparrows” about young people with special needs who do not give up and achieve a lot in life). The book has yet to be started inconsistently, because so much has been experienced and such people have been met. And not everyone can make films. Well, very interesting. Also those movie characters. There is only some quintessence of watching it on the screen, but there have been all kinds of domestic miracles. All kinds of jokes and pranks and adventures. What has never been seen!”
In the conversation, Laima Žurgina reveals that she followed this path consistently from the age of 14 [kino], starting with a photo studio, then to a university, then a cinema studio. Very deliberately.
“I think that this is the only way to develop mastery and do something. I think it is important to realize what you want to do at a young age and then follow that path. I have always thought it important and I am pleased that my profession has given me an interesting life,” admits Laima Jurgin.
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