Cast

"Leader" Vova, "First" Artur, "Second" Paulina

"Third" Artur, "Fourth" Anton

in Russian (no subtitles)

This collaborative film Karosta stemmed from the International workshop on Locative Media in Karosta, Latvia in 2003.

The film tells the story of a gang in the future, navigating their world with portable devices and GPS co-ordinates, as they set out to retrieve the gang Leader's brother from a capsule, where he has been in growing in sleep suspension for 15 years inside the Restricted Zone.

The workshop brought together artists, technologists and thinkers exploring global positioning systems, mapping technologies and location based experiments.

The process worked alongside local young people who lived in the area along with the arts centre K@2 to write a story that used specific locations in the area, combined with GPS technologies, to develop film that forged a futuristic mythology in an area in great need of social and economic regeneration.

The word Karosta means 'War Harbour'. The landscape in Karosta, Latvia consists of remnants of the Soviet occupation and itÕs military and naval operations. When the Soviets departed in 1991, the population of this enclosed militarized zone fell from 25,000 to a few thousand in a matter of days.

The rich history of the area and it's extraordinary environment of concrete towers, tunnels, bunkers and abandoned military buildings are explored in this short science fiction drama.

After asking one local Russian young person to choose some of his friends to work with as the cast, the film was directed from a scenario, written very quickly and shot on DV with a crew of 2 in a few days.

The young actors all took part in the making of the film learning as they went along, and working in very difficult fliming conditions.T

We used a Latvian/Russian/English translator, but with all specific dialogue improvised and developed by the young novice actors themselves and spoken in Russian.