19.10.2026 at 20:30. “One Eye Dry, the Other Wet.” For Herz Frank’s 100th Anniversary: The Salt Bread, From Centaur, Diagnosis, Ten Minutes Older, Song of Songs, Madonna. 20th Century, Dear Juliett, After, Dom Kino, Lilac Hall

Description

Stones on the shore, crusted with sea salt, like loaves of bread; the letter U drawn on a school blackboard in the shape of a fish; first-graders scratching with their pencils, and their fathers hauling nets of live fish through the night; a pram rocking, and the unease of the sea. The Salt Bread is a lyric sketch of the working days of Latvian fishermen, grown out of newspaper reportage: Frank built the film from his own photographs for the paper Rīgas Balss.

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.

Description

Taking his cue from Petrov-Vodkin’s Bathing of a Red Horse, Herz Frank turns a report from a draught-horse competition into a metaphor of endurance, speaking not only of the animal world but of the human will to reach the impossible.

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.

Description

Inspired by Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp and shot in a pathologist’s room. Unembarrassed by the facts of the body, the filmmaker watches a person whose daily routine is an encounter with the physiology of death.

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.

Description

Frank’s best-known film: a hidden-camera, single-take study of a three-year-old boy watching a puppet play. In the space of ten minutes, anxiety and relief, fear and joy pass across the child’s face, revealing through those emotions the mysteries of a human soul.

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.

Description

Set to Shostakovich and to a mother’s ragged breathing — there is not a word in the film — the camera watches a human being come into the world. Less concerned with physiology than with the parents’ strain, Frank treats the birth as one of the central mysteries of existence.

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.

Description

A photograph of an excavated mass grave in woods on the edge of Riga, where the Nazis shot Jews, is set beside Leonardo’s Madonna Litta. In an enlarged detail of the photograph, among the remains, a silhouette of a woman with a child in her arms comes into view. According to Frank, this is the Madonna of our time, embodying the tragedy of the Holocaust and the collapse of humanism.

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.

Description

Shot in a single day in Verona, in the courtyard of the Casa di Giulietta, where legend places the beginning of Romeo and Juliet’s love. A string of anthropological sketches around the statue of Juliet: touching her breast is said to bring luck in love. Recording the tourists’ unbuttoned behaviour at the monument, Frank’s camera shows a symbol of higher love turned into a casualty of mass culture.

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.

Description

The director’s last completed film — a kind of testament, inspired by a haiku:

This morning…
Hoarfrost revealed a wonder to me…
Life after death…

About the director:

Herz Frank

Born 17 January 1926 in Ludza, Latvia.
He trained as a lawyer. After graduating from an infantry officers’ school he served in Transbaikalia. He worked as a journalist, photo-reporter, and advertising artist in Chita, Vladimir, and Riga. From 1962, he was a screenwriter and director at Riga Film Studio. From 1993, he lived in Israel and Latvia. He taught at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors, at film schools in Germany, and at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
One of the founders of the Riga school of documentary filmmaking, Frank created more than 30 films, winning accolades at festivals around the world. Among the works that have become landmarks of documentary cinema are Ten Minutes Older, The Last Judgement, and Once There Were the Seven Simeons (with Vladimir Eisner). Author of the books Ptolemy’s Map (1975) and Look Back at the Threshold (2009).
Herz Frank died on 3 March 2013.