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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20260415T180000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20260415T193000
SUMMARY:Discourse Europe 2: Can’t Help Being Human
DESCRIPTION:The “Can’t Help Being Human” programme gathers six contemporary Latvian short films that explore the tensions between private impulses and social expectations\, between inner life and the roles we perform. Moving between fiction\, documentary and animation\, the selection follows the ways people navigate vulnerability\, longing and responsibility\, often through small rituals\, routines and gestures of care.\nIt opens with RIGA’S LILAC\, where seemingly casual conversations about smell unfold into unexpectedly revealing encounters. Between anxious citizens\, overconfident authorities and passing strangers\, testimonies show how something as intangible as scent can carry embarrassment\, humour and quiet vulnerability.\nIn CAN’T HELP MYSELF\, the search for connection drifts along the Baltic coast. While selling ice cream\, a young woman immerses herself in guided affirmations and fragments of overheard conversations\, rehearsing intimacy in a landscape saturated with advice\, doubt and longing.\nA darker form of routine shapes CLEANLINESS. While it is a humorous portrait of an office worker obsessed with hygiene\, the film reveals a more fragile emotional reality where carefully maintained rituals hint at deeper anxieties and dependencies.\nTurning toward the cinema itself\, 81 METERS enters Latvia’s last surviving movie theatres during the pandemic in 2021. Shot on Super 8\, the film reflects on the vulnerability of physical cinema spaces and the collective memories they continue to hold.\nQuestions of discipline and duty surface in GUARD OF HONOUR\, where a ceremonial military routine persists even as a natural disaster disrupts it. The simple act of remaining at one’s post becomes both absurd and quietly poignant.\nFinally\, WHERE DOES THE SUN SLEEP AT NIGHT imagines the modern workplace as a surreal corporate mythology. In windowless offices populated by weary managers and accountants\, strange rituals and fragments of folklore emerge as ways of coping with the monotony of contemporary labour.\nAcross these works\, humour\, melancholy and quiet absurdity intertwine. Together they portray a present in which people create routines\, stories and small gestures of care – ways of grounding themselves and making sense of everyday life. In moments of uncertainty\, these habits become tools for resilience\, helping us navigate a world shaped not only by personal doubt but also by the pressures and anxieties of the current moment. The films gently remind us that being human means continually searching for connection\, meaning and stability\, even when the wider world feels unsettled.\n\nCurated by Lauma Kaudzīte
LOCATION:Dresden\, Thalia
DTSTAMP;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20260814T083850
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