In December 1895 when the brothers Lumiere first presented their moving pictures at the Grand Café, 14 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, we were with them in our thoughts. The first cinema show in Riga took place but six months later, in the Solomonsky Circus building. On summer evenings after dark Rigans watched the moving pictures in Vērmanes Garden. The first public cinema in Riga, The Royal Vio, was built in 1901, and there was enough place for 888 film-goers in the auditorium and 312 more in the balcony.

After the Lumiere brothers, the first Latvian movie was a documentary. Aleksandrs Stanke, the cameraman, filmed the unveiling of the monument for Peter I in the Riga city centre. And what a boom followed! Cinemas sprang up in all major cities and towns; silent movies were also watched in the countryside on improvised screens made by fastening a white bed sheet on a barn wall. In 1930 there were 85 cinemas in Latvia, 31 of them in Riga.

Starting 1913, feature films were made in Riga — the sort with heartrending love stories, plenty to cry about and, most importantly, happy endings. Latvian maidens were in great demand with European film producers and starred in many feature films abroad, particularly in Germany. Sadly, our actresses tended to adopt more exotic screen names and for career reasons became famous as German film stars. Lia Mara and Maria Leiko were two our most famous silent film actresses. Paris and Berlin were at their feet!

As soon as the world had recovered from World War I, Latvians picked up where they had left off in the cinema sphere. We did not buy the expensive sound recording technology invented elsewhere in the world, however, ― the brothers Blumbergs, Edgars and Voldermārs, built their own equipment that could easily compete with the costly foreign models. The Latvju Filma Joint-Stock Company was formed; it produced newsreels and feature films. The first cameramen, Jānis Sīlis, Arnolds Cālītis and Eduards Kraucs, were converts from the photography trade.

The world-renowned cameraman Eduards Tissé (Ķīsis) was born in Liepāja and the director Sergey Eisenstein in Riga.

The first feature films, Lāčplēsis (based on the epic poem about a mythical hero whose name translates as ‘The Bearslayer’), A Wedding in Nīca, The Fisherman’s Son were dedicated to our heroic past: visually beautiful screen adaptations of popular literary works in the vein of National Romanticism.

Just like elsewhere in the world, the cinema goers in the 1920s were treated to impressionistic experiments. The 1930s films were mostly fashioned after the psychological cinema popular elsewhere in Europe; the mindset and motivation of the character took the limelight. The visual aesthetics of the frame – particularly landscapes and closeups -- seems impressive even now. The first Latvian film with a soundtrack was The Daugava: a picturesque quasi documentary with some acting with the plot developed around three young travelers, all played by amateur actors; it contains footage of famous culture personalities living on the banks of the Daugava river. The same aftertaste of a century’s worth of values is left by The Gauja, a cinematic travelogue about the second most beautiful of Latvia’s rivers.

Our film critics find lots of faults with Latvian movies. They say there is not enough suspense and tension. And apparently our action flicks are also not dynamic enough. Latvian cinema is said to have been influenced by Nordic filmmaking ― the early Swedish cinematography and German expressionism.

Starting 1986, the Arsenāls International Film Forum inspired by Augusts Sukuts is held every other year. During the first years of its existence, Arsenāls was like a platform for avant-garde cinema. Most of the Soviet-censored movies (the so-called "shelf films") were first screened at the forum. During the annual Lielais Kristaps National Film Festival Latvian films of various genres are shown to packed auditoriums. Spring is the time for the Berimora Kino Children's Film Festival. Animation film afficionados come together for the Bimini International Animation Festival and for the last twelve years the Baltijas Pērle International Film Festival has been held every August.