From the archive to the silver screen

The Gold Spinners

The Gold Spinners is a story about the birth, glory, and disappearance of a peculiar, invisible, and mighty business empire, the film studio Eesti Reklaamfilm, the only company producing commercials in the Soviet Union.

Soviet Hippies

A wildflower power ride on the footprints of the Soviet hippie movement takes you into the psychedelic underground of the 1970s. In search of freedom and happiness under the thumb of the strict political regime a colorful crowd of artists, musicians, freaks, vagabonds, and other long-haired dropouts created their own System in the Soviet Union. Years later, a group of eccentric hippies take a road journey to Moscow where people still gather annually on the 1st of June to commemorate a tragic event in 1971, when thousands of hippies were arrested by the KGB.

Rodeo - Taming a Wild Country

It is 1992 and the first free elections held in Estonia since World War II have to the surprise of all brought to power young and idealistic political forces. They are led by 32-year-old Mart Laar, Europe’s youngest prime minister, who is charged with crafting a country out of chaos. This is a story about gaining and losing trust, about the widening conflict between idealists and a rising economic elite, when a prime minister’s good options grow fewer by the day.

Ahto. Chasing A Dream

A documentary about Ahto Valter, a big dreamer, a great adventurer and sailor whose journey around the world on a sailboat that carries his name makes young boys yearn for adventure, young ladies write love letters and reporters follow him everywhere. Nobody knew what was this motivator that made him do it. A hero's restless mind, hardships over the years chasing his dream and failures on the way can be seen in the film that uses unique archive material to open the cravings and challenges of an explorer from the previous century. A colorful journey around the world can be observed thanks to the diaries of our main hero and his father and the unique film footage that was recorded during the journey. This is a story of an adventurer's life and becoming a sailor and a man and a film about the world he had to struggle against to fulfill his dream.

The Diary of Vaino Vahing

In 1968–1984, Vaino Vahing kept a diary about real events and persons in his own subjective interpretation. It reflects the cultural life of Tartu, love affairs, bohemian parties, and intellectual quests of the time. Vahing was interested in borderline situations, crossing the borders. He drew no clear line between art and life. Vahing provoked people, tried to make them lose their masks, their self-control. He called this provoking the Spiel or play. We are looking at a creator who has made disharmony his source of inspiration, who experiences “the greatest torment in love”. One who fears to lose himself in love. A human perceiving the great power of love and responding subconsciously with disharmony. The red line in the diary of Vahing is sacrificing life for art. The life where everyday burns to ashes and nothing but pure art remains. Is this possible at all or do we still have to try to love first? To err is human, as well as to suffer from the consequences. But does a person suffer just because erring, or is suffering an inevitable part of a human being? A part, deeper reasons of which remain a secret? The film does not try to judge Vahing but cast some light into these black holes on the verge of which he performed his balancing act that makes him human and his creations ever enchanting.

u.Q.

To understand the international phenomenon of Uku Kuut means to understand the ability of different musical niches, sub-genres, and hidden creative explosions to not only exist, but flourish, completely independently of the mainstream. Kuut’s life, mothered by Maryn E.Coote (who you may know as the Estonian Jazz diva Marju Kuut), took him from the Soviet Union to refuge in Sweden, music studios in Los Angeles, back to a re-independent Estonia and later, fighting ALS, to speakers all around the world. A Greek comedy captured on 8mm, VHS and BETA tape.

Gori The Caricaturist

A richly animated documentary about the extremely popular caricaturist Gori, whose fate in Estonia at the beginning of the last century shows the balance between power and freedom like a mirror. In the Fellini-like world of Gori (1894-1944), farce and drama, mockery and big politics mix. There is no subject that Gori's pen will not mock until the winds turn and mouths are being closed. Power is concentrated in the hands of new dictators. And that power fears nothing more than its own ridiculousness. However, ridiculing the enemy is one of his most effective weapons. Gori the Caricaturist by Raimo Jõerand is all about talent. About the artist's temptation to waste and share his talent when it is accompanied by applause, and about the obligation to serve his talent even if it leads straight to destruction. Here, documentary narrative and grotesque animation intertwine. The story of a man who drew himself to death.

Varblane, mitte kanaarilind