It was a time full of adrenaline and rapid changes.

The second half of the ’80s. This was a decade marked by the rise in tension between the American and Russian blocks in the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thirty years have passed since the historical events which dramatically changed the cultural scene of the Soviet Union forever.

A team of filmmakers decided to carry out their own investigation into the change that was started by one man: Indulis Bilzens. He stood by the birth of rave culture in Germany and successfully has brought it on the other side of Iron Curtain in the second half of the ’80s.

Techno first appeared in the Baltics in 1986.

Bilzens was born in Riga in 1940, in the last year of the first independent Latvian Republic. In this year happened the first Soviet invasion, and his father was deported to Siberia. Between 1941 and 44 the country was occupied by the Germans. His mother fled the country with him into West Germany because of the second Soviet invasion in 1944.

Bilzens studied English in Cambridge – and was involved in the British peace movement -, medical informatics in Bonn and Stuttgart, and electronic composition at the University of Düsseldorf. Worked for a number of German newspapers and organized avant-garde music events and exhibitions. He began to visit his homeland in the late ’70s (then part of Communist Russian Empire i.e. the Soviet Union).

His friendship with the German DJ Maximilian Lenz (WestBam) led to an interest in the new electronic music coming out of the US. He was involved in the founding of Low Spirit label, Love Parade, and Mayday parties. Bilzens and Lenz made repeated visits to Riga in the late ’80s, introducing DJ culture.

ERA OF DANCE

a film about the first techno beats in the USSR.

More videos from the film.

A long article about the movie on Deep Baltic