"I want to stress how important it is to reach students and young people. They're the diplomats, businessmen and politicians of the future. This is one of the reasons why we chose Brainstorm," said Ojars Kalnins, director of the Latvian Institute. "Brainstorm is also the only Latvian group popular abroad and the song is a great advertising element for the film."
Several videos have already been made about tourism and economics in Latvia by the Latvian Development Agency, but this five-minute-long award-winning video is the first one of its kind produced.
"I don't want to tell you the script of the film prematurely. Everything may change during the process of shooting it," said Uldis Cekuls, a producer at Vides Filmu Studija.
"The film won't be an illustration of the song. Instead, it will speak in symbols and associations that will supplement the song," he added.
"The image of Latvia consists of many elements: nature, objects, buildings, culture and people. We want to show a bit of everything," said Kalnins. "Latvia has both unique and common symbols. We want to use examples of both. It's important for many foreigners to see that we have banks, gas stations and normal shops, too.
"We will show different people, teachers, politicians and military officers," Kalnins said.
The budget for the film is 7,800 lats ($12,400). It is financed partly by the Defense Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Latvian Tourism Development Agency, and the president's and state chancelleries.
Vides Filmu Studija is known for video stories about Latvian nature they have produced. "Welcome to My Country" will be directed by Dainis Klava. He has directed a similar project in a series of 10 video clips, called "Nature of Latvia."
To attract more viewers, the studio has planned to include sounds of nature, the city and people in addition to the song.
The video will be shot by the end of September and distributed among embassies and state institutions. It will be shown at international exhibitions and offered to local and foreign television companies.
The total budget of the Latvian Institute is 90,000 lats. But due to a lack of resources, there are no plans to buy broadcasting time in foreign television stations.
Vides Filmu Studija will also produce a special video without the Brainstorm song just for the use of foreign television companies. Using provided visual material, foreign TV companies will then be able to develop their own stories about Latvia.
Within the last year the institute has assisted about 100 foreign journalists who have wanted to write about Latvia.
According to travel statistics, in 2000 Latvia ranked in last place as a destination for foreign tourists in the Baltic countries. One of the possible reasons for this could be the dire lack of information on Latvia that exists around the world.
"If we had more money we could produce more brochures and videos about Latvia," said Agris Villers, a project coordinator at the Latvian Institute. "At present, we have just a handful of brochures about Latvian history, traditions, folk songs, folk costumes and several other topics," he continued.
"We also try to spread the word about Latvia with the help of the Internet (www.latinst.lv), where the information is offered in seven languages."
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