Capitalism at Crossroad Street

How do you show a society in transition? Take a street, its residents and the observing eye of a camera. This is just what happened on Crossroad Street, a surprisingly rural back street in the middle of the Latvian capital of Riga. Veteran filmmaker Ivars Seleckis filmed (1988, winner of the Joris Ivens Award at IDFA 1989) just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He returned in 1999 shortly after Latvia's independence to film . Now that the financial crisis might be spelling an end to the capitalist dream, Seleckis is headed back one more time. In voiceover, he offers mildly ironic commentary on the daily routine of the residents, like Daiga, a single mom who is trying to keep her head above water. Then there's the undertaker and amateur theologian Aldis, who believes that the Apocalypse is nigh. We bear witness to the highs and the lows of the close-knit community: the Midsummer festivities, the annual canoe race and Aldis's financial ruin and subsequent loss of his Jacuzzi. In short interviews, the Crossroaders reflect on their lives in uncertain times, just as Seleckis occasionally looks back at excerpts from his earlier films. Despite the crisis, the residents persevere. As Daiga says, "We survived Russian times, so we just have to weather these times, too."