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Hyperbole? Maybe. But as I’ve said about more than one of his films, “Who the hell knows.” In any case the news of Jean-Luc Godard’s death can only send me—having spent, let’s say, half my conscious life discovering, grappling with, flailing against one of the three or four greatest artists who’s been on the same planet—into a reverential mode. And first instinct upon hearing it was to rewatch my favorite of his films: In the Darkness of Time, which needs only 10 minutes and 45 seconds to locate almost the totality of a career that began 40 years prior and had 20-odd left.

Commissioned in 2001 for the anthology Ten Minutes Older: The Cello, which asked directors to create any work ten minutes in length, Godard chose to explore the end of humanity vis-à-vis its essential components. His apocalyptic vision—the end of youth, thought, courage, story, beauty,...

This year the Riga International Film Festival ‘Arsenals’ has chosen to honour Latvian documentarist Herz Frank on the occasion of his 85th birthday. Sporting his signature knitted beret and Leica camera, Frank attended the opening of an exhibition on his life and work at Riga’s small but modern Film Museum, where he signed copies of his book, Turn Back on the Threshold (Uz sliekšņa atskaties, Kino Raksti Library).

Frank is a representative of the ‘Riga Style’, a poetic and observational approach to documentary. One of his most celebrated shorts is 10 Minutes Older (Vecāks par 10 minūtēm, 1978) which presents close-ups of children watching a puppet show. Although the film’s spectators never see the puppets, there is a far more interesting show in the childrens’ faces as they are affected by different emotions. Many years later, this film inspired two omnibus features, Ten Minutes Older: The Cello and Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet...