Often described as Latvia’s answer to Jean-Luc Godard, Rolands Kalniņš was a maverick filmmaker whose work redefined the limits of cinema under Soviet censorship. In this new video essay, we explore how Kalniņš carved out a defiantly creative path, focusing on his psychedelic rock musical Four White Shirts. His films fought for memory, music, and national identity, even when the state tried, in Kalniņš’s own words, to “erase them from history.”

This exclusive video essay is based on an essay originally written by Joshua Polanski and published on the Klassiki Journal.