Ron Holloway, GEP/Interfilm, 17 January 2004

An all-embracing film event with many faces, the 7th Black Nights Film Festival (“BNFF,” or “PÖFF” in Estonian), scheduled 22 November to 7 December 2003 took place in three cities (Tallinn, Tartu, Viljandi) and showcased under founder director Tiina Lokk a festival record total of 433 films from more than 50 countries. Besides the Main Program, PÖFF is subdivided into the Sleepwalkers Festival (student films), the Just Film Festival (children and youth films), and the Animated Dreams Festival (animation films) - each of which is a festival onto itself with its own programmer and awards. In addition, there is the well attended Baltic Event, an annual three-day showcase that draws some 40 participants (producers, distributors, critics, festival directors) to view the latest productions and works-in-progress from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. And since the festival takes place annually during the “black nights” in early December, the visitor is treated to a decorative holiday backdrop - a sky-high Christmas tree on the town square in old city of Tallinn.

 Queried why her Black Nights offers the Tallinn public such a rich display of international film fare, Tiina Lokk laid it right on the line: “PÖFF was created with a purpose - to evoke hunger and curiosity for everything in the way of cinema that’s outside us but still not available.” And since the weeks just before the holiday season are rather weak at the box office, she was able to book the flagship multiplex at the Coca-Cola Plaza - and fill it with an audience of 44,500, most of them yearning for art cinema, cult films, and anything other than American mainstream movies. More than 100 programs were sellouts. Among these, not surprisingly, the Qatsi Trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi (1983), Powaqqatsi (1988), and Naqoyqatsi (2002) by director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass. As a special event the “Koyaanisqatsi Live!” concert, programmed together with the Estonian Concert, drew an audience of 2,300. Estonia, after all, is the land of avant-garde composer Arvo Pärt, whose “To Jerusalem” choral arrangement was performed by a young vocal ensemble in the Old Town Hall.

 In the New Estonian Films program could be seen the final cut of Sulev Keedus’s remarkable and long-awaited Somnambuul (Broken Sleep) (Estonia/Finland; image above). A portrait of anxiety and loneliness, Broken Sleep was filmed on an isolated island in the Baltic Sea and picks up where Keedus’s Georgica (1998), the director’s response to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (USSR, 1979), had previously left off five years ago. Morten Tyldum’s Buddy (Norway) opened the festival. Irish director Jim Sheridan was present for the closing night screening of In America (USA/UK/Ireland), in which the child actors Sarah and Emma Bolger steal every scene they are in. Israeli director Amos Gitai flew in from the Tokyo festival for the presentation of Alila (Israel/France), a documentary about Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in Tel Aviv. The nine films in the Focus on China retrospective was augmented by another six Asian films in an “Eastern Sunrise” section - “enough reason for a NETPAC (Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema) Jury in Tallinn next year,” mused Tiina Lokk. The 220-page catalogue, printed in Estonian and English, was packed with a wealth of information on world cinema.

 As for the Baltic Event, three works-in-progress are well worth keeping an eye on. Jaak Kilmi and Rene Reinumägi’s Revolution of Pigs (Estonia) depicts a revolt at a summer youth camp in the 1980s, just before the demise of socialism in the Soviet Union. Laila Pakalnina’s The Bus (Latvia) takes the viewer on an insightful drive along the coast from Tallinn to Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg), the Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland. Not included in the Baltic Event program, but along the same thematic lines as The Bus, Sarunas Bartas’s Seven Invisible Men (Lithuania) is a road movie that runs from Lithuania and Poland to Belarus and Russia. To be sure, with the formation of the new Media Desks in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius, one can expect an eruption of creative talent in the Balticum.

Awards

MAIN PROGRAM
Best Film - Audience Award - Antique Storm Lantern
Nousukausi (Upswing) (Finland), Johanna Vuoksenmaa
Best Film - Estonian Film Journalists - Glass Sculpture by Ivo Lill
Uzak (Distant) (Turkey), Nuri Bilge Ceylan

FICC Jury - Federation Internationale des Cine-Clubs
Best Film
Vozvrashenie (The Return) (Russia), Andrei Zvyagintsev
Special Mention
Han ni zai yiki (Together) (China), Chen Kaige

ANIMATED DREAMS Awards
Grand Prix - Wooden Wolf
The Separation (UK), Robert Morgan
Special mention
Tant de chiens (So Many Dogs) (France), Stephane Richard
Best Design
L’odeur du chien mouille (The Smell of the Wet Dog) (France),. Eric Montchaud
Best Screenplay
How Mermaids Breed (UK ), Joan Ashworth

JUST FILM Awards
Best children’s Film
Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer (The Flying Classroom) (Germany), Tomy Wigand
Best Youth Film
Ondskan (Evil) (Sweden), Mikael Hafström
Best Character
Bibi Blocksberg in Bibi Blocksberg (Germany), Hermine