Crazy Girls
Jesper Nordahl
(LV 2001, 8:25)
The crazy girls dance through neglected streets singing songs everyone is familiar with. Oblivious to their surroundings, they try to concentrate on the beat and tempo of the music as they dance towards the camera. But the Crazy Girls are not the latest girl band, but three ten year olds from Karosta, a port Suburb of Liepaja, Latvia. The competition between the trio is good-natured and charming to watch; Agnese is the leader, most opionated and setting the pace of the dancing and talk, Annija and Katrina are twins, Annija being the least confident or interested, having her dancing impeded by the ghetto-blaster she has to carry as they dance through the streets. They rehearse every day, have a choreographer and their dreams is to be like famous people they look up to like Britney Spears and the A-teens, an Abba cover band. From a bleak and forgotten landscape of post-industrial and economic devastation emerged the Crazy Girls who found a playful escape from the harsh reality of their situation with an uncanny innocence and optimism. Nonetheless, one can surmise something of their lives from what surrounds them, a mixture of broken Russia and broken USSR, the modern and the orthodox equally neglected within a damaged Latvia.