The Estonian film industry is small and, since the collapse of planned film production in 1989 and the lifting of state censorship in 1990, there have been huge changes in style, content and financing. Producers have had to find new ways of raising funds, often via foreign partners. Darkness in Tallinn (1993), a tale of local thieves stealing gold reserves being returned to the newly independent Estonia, was a Finnish venture that found favour in the West. Estonia’s answer to Darryl Zanuck is media mogul Kristian Taska (his father, Ilmas, was a Hollywood producer), who scored a big hit at home with Names in Marble (2002, directed by Elmo Nüganen), about a class of ill-equipped schoolboys who fought in Estonia’s Independence War. Off the back of that, he raised 25 million EEK for No One Sleeps Tonight, a thriller due out in early 2004. Estonian animation, much of it absurdist and darkly comic, has bagged a staggering number of animation festival awards. The internationally acclaimed Priit Pärn’s best works include Lunch on the Grass (1987), about a poet in a totalitarian world, and Hotel E (1992), about the integration of Europe. Another Soviet-era classic is Rein Raamat’s Hell, based on drawings by Eduard Viiralt. There are three main cinemas in Tallinn, all showing largely American films in English, with Estonian subtitles. Coca-Cola Plaza Multiplex, Hobujaama 5, T 680 0724, http://www.mpde.ee. is the highest-tech with 11 screens. Kosmos, Parnu maantee 45, T 667 7888, http://www.kosmos.ee. was the city’s largest in the Soviet time, now rather dated. Sõprus, Vana-Posti 8, T 644 1919, http://www.kino.ee. is housed in a delightfully pompous neoclassical Stalinist building in the Old Town. Tallinn has one arthouse cinema, with retrospectives and loads of atmosphere: Eesti Kinoliit Kinomaja, Uus 3, T 646 4510. tickets 40 EEK.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
 |
Tallinn - £7.99
|
|
||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
 |
||||
|
| ||||
|
||||
 |
||||||||
|
|
|
||||||
|
||||||||
