Riho Västrik

An observational documentary by Maria Aua is about the reconstruction of the former textile factory into the Academy of Arts. The process of transformation is the result of the selfless and hard physical work of the builders.

At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.

The director, who has always been viewed as the black sheep in her family, sets out to the Belarusian town of Vitebsk to talk with her parents about previous grievances and topics that were considered taboo. The effort to find a common language, which runs into stormy emotions and the inability to voice honest opinions, is captured through both personal moments and detailed shots of the protagonists’ faces.

Vello moved to a secluded swamp island 30 years ago. He left his career and city life to live in harmony with mother nature. Vello makes a living from beekeeping and hunting, his life flows in the same rhythm as the nature around him.

Brothers Tarmo and Toomas Urb are musicians whose phenomenon in 1980s Estonia is hard to overestimate. Performing romantic ballads accompanied by guitar, they were able to bring a full house to any concert hall. Some songs like "Imeline laas" or "Musta pori näkku" have become folklore. The brothers were compared to the duo Simon & Garfunkel.

The nature documentary filmmakers move through all four seasons and four basic landscape types in Estonia: the swamp, the forest, the coast and the wooded meadow. Everything that appears in front of the camera lens, including people, will become a part of the landscape pattern. People have habitated Estonian territory for more than 10 thousand years. Withdrawal of the ice cap created a habitat that has been adjusted to human needs during thousands of years. Lots of fields, pasture lands and hayfields have been created; the forests have been cut and planted. Unnecessary profit making has been avoided. The variety of Estonian landscapes combines wilderness, semi-natural communities and cultivated land.

In 1982, a fire broke out in the Soviet Antarctic research station Vostok and destroyed the station's power plant. The expedition was left without light or heating right before the four-month long polar night set in, with an outside temperature of -70 °C. The men decided not to ask for help, because they knew that it was nowhere to be found.

The Wind Sculpted Land is a film about Estonian nature. The nature of this Northern country might not seem anything special at a first glance, but digging deeper one can find true gems. Flooded meadows, coastline, bogs altogether with wild animals and flocks of migrating birds are actually small worlds on their own. Even more, the very same nature has held and sculpted the character of the people living here.

A reindeer herdsman’s life is as gently monotonous as the tundra itself. It flows in synchrony with the life of the reindeer herd from one migration to the next. The time between these two points belongs entirely to the herdsman. It’s áigi - the herdsman’s time.

Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (1815 – 1894), Russian scientist of Baltic German and Estonian origin, organized a scientific expedition to Taymyr Peninsula, the Northern end of Eurasia in 1842-1845. Century and a half later a group of Estonian scientists took the same route. The filmmakers faced the crisp arctic tundra with thousands of birds and wild reindeers and met the native people whose forefathers once gave directions to Middendorff in order to reach the Arctic Ocean.

The Lithuanian scientist Ausra Revutaite has spent 30 years in the Tian Shan mountain range in Central Asia, straddling the borders between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang. Some 3,500 meters above sea level with only her faithful dog and gray cat for company, she studies climate change on the Tuyuksu Glacier at an old Soviet-era research station. She loves the solitude and silence that her painstaking work brings her. Magnificent shots of her surroundings and everyday work are interspersed with archive footage of the people who preceded her by a century. Not much seems to have changed.

The River Emajõgi forms a powerful water world hiding an ancient life. Little Aleksander together with his filmmaker father Remek Meel discovers Alam-Pedja nature reserve and the secrets of its enchanting world. Father and son get acquainted with the hidden life of eagles, beavers, otters, waxwings, great snipes, ravens, penduline tits and Ural owls.

Sven Grünberg is a composer, musician, Buddhist thinker, the introducer of the Dalai Lama to Estonia, and a father – to name just a few roles in his life. Of course, he is also a son, husband, brother, teacher, and human being. He is a distinctive personality with a well-defined worldview. Despite his connection with Buddhism, he is a man of sharp words, yet one who is ready to take responsibility for his opinions or judgments. A few years ago, Grünberg underwent a serious heart operation, which led him to see life from a new perspective. Bonus Track portrays Sven Grünberg in the period following his operation, as he continues to create new music, ensures the flawless preservation of his earlier works, raises his preschool-aged daughter, and organizes the third visit of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

An Estonian student hiking group get caught up in a series of scary events unfolding in wintry Siberia. The unpopular group leader Olle, becomes disappointed in his companions during the trip and disappears on the last day in the mountains. His rival, liberal-minded and adventurous Eero guides the descending hikers into a Buryate village on the mountain to seek help. A weird and insane chain of events is unleashed which seems to be orchestrated by the missing Olle. In a foreign land and among people they do not know, the hikers are faced with a task which they at first do not want to undertake and later are unable to tackle.

A meditative film journey to an Estonian forest, where large predators go about their daily business.

A poetic documentary about life in a war-torn Chechen village, with the cemetery as its symbolic focal point. The village lives and breathes in unison. The Chechen gravediggers are always busy. Death is an everyday visitor. It does not even matter that yet another war has ended. The people live stuck in a circle of vengeance. They also gather into circles to chant prayers to God. Only the cows are grazing calmly next to the cemetery and the children are happily going about their business. The Chechens' parting words to one another are, "May you come back free!"

A dreamlike passage through the architecture of shapes created from light and shadow. This film is a cinematographic attempt to find an invisible city that exists in parallel to Tartu.

Apatity, a far-north industrial town in Russia, first came into being as a USSR concentration camp. Although its environment is at the brink of ecological disaster, the people here still believe in the state’s promise of immortality that can be gained through sacrificial service to the fatherland. This is how the elite in a totalitarian state buy a person’s will, strength, talent and, indeed, life, turning the human being into another resource that is as faceless as a grey lump of ore. ‘I cannot fight big corporations or state structures with a film. But I hope that there is someone in the darkness of the cinema whose heart will get a bit warmer after seeing it,’ says the director. The larger part of the film was shot during the polar night.

A karakat is an unsinkable vehicle that every self-respecting resident of the Peipus shore assembles with his own hands. Originally intended to drive the owner to a fishing spot in the winter, today the karakat has become a unique “ice-taxi.” By observing several karakat-men’s routines, we aim to portray a fascinating culture of old-believers, self assembled hybrid vehicles and ice fishing in this part of Estonia.