TALLINN — When the weather outside is frightful, there’s always movies.
The summer is the season for Hollywood blockbusters, but I’ve always thought winter was a better time to see a movie. Especially in the Baltics. It’s cold and the days are short and gray — it’s not like you’ll miss any rays of sunshine while in the cinema.
Starting Nov. 12 there will be plenty of chances to escape the bluster and chill for a theater seat for the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn. It’s also a chance to see the latest offspring of the nascent Baltic film industry.
Due to decades of Soviet censorship and isolation from the Western world and their small size, the Baltic nations have never been powerhouses in the world cinema scene. The cutoff in state funding following independence essentially halted feature-length film-making altogether; in 1996, neither of the Baltic states released a single full-length non-documentary film.
Since those dark days the creative output in all three countries’ film industry has rebounded, and while there’s yet to be an international breakout hit, there’s budding talent from which the Baltics’ version of “Amélie” or “Slumdog Millionaire” may someday emerge. Each country has managed to produce hits within their borders and also has had a handful of entries in prestigious film festivals like Cannes, Venice and Berlin.
The Estonian mockumentary "Disco and Atomic War" will be shown at the festival. This screenshot also illustrates what your skin will look like after a sunless Baltic winter.
This year’s 13th anniversary Black Nights festival features films from all three Baltic states — six from Estonia, two from Lithuania and one from Latvia.
“While searching the films for the competition program we decided to concentrate only on feature films since Tridens program started out as a project that could help to develop Baltic feature films. There is just one exception, the Estonian documentary “Disco and Atomic War.” However, this is actually not a real documentary but a kind of mocumentary — a feature film presented as a documentary,” Ulla Kattai, Black Nights spokeswoman told Baltic Reports. “The economic crises has an effect on the number and quality of the films. It was quite difficult to choose films from Latvia and Lithuania where the state of economy is even more difficult. It will probably be even more difficult next year since there is just not enough money to make films and the situation will probably be the same in Estonia, too.”
Prizes for filmmakers include the €5,000 Tridens Baltic Film Award to the best Baltic film and the 50,000 krooni (€3,200) Scottish Leader Estonian Film Award to the best Estonian feature film, to be decided by the festival jury which includes Chankit Chamnivikaipong, a film camera operator from Thailand, Leon van der Merve, the head of the African Cape Winelands Film Festival and Uldis Cekulis, a Latvian film producer.
The Tridens portion of Black Nights starts Nov. 29, the student film portion Nov. 12, the animated portion Nov. 18. Tickets are available at the Solaris shopping center and on the Pietilevi ticket website. Unfortunately a full schedule of festival showings and events is still not available, but hopefully the organizers will sort this out and post it on their website.
