Soviet Estonian bicycle film: sport, nation and race narratives

ABSTRACT

This article deals with Soviet Estonian bicycle films focusing on sport. Four films are selected for analysis: three documentaries by Hans Roosipuu and the fiction film Küljetuul/Side Wind (1983) by Raul Tammet. The films show a chronological development of the bicycle race film, starting with Hans Roosipuu's short film Ülekanne 56:13/Transmission 56:13 (1969) and ending with Raul Tammet's Side Wind, screened on television a few years before Glasnost was introduced in the Soviet Union. The analysis focuses on the issue of national identity building on the notion that sport was one of the few venues where Estonians could express their nationality. The analysis finds that the closer we get to the Glasnost period the more the films tend to highlight the Estonianness or concerns for Estonian bicycle riders. Moreover, in comparison with Western bicycle film, the Estonian films have didactic qualities based in the traditions of socialist realism and a tendency to elevate the bicycle race mechanic due to Soviet bicycling culture being less advanced. Also earlier than their Western counterpart, the Estonian bicycle films are concerned with the ‘green’ value of the bicycle in a drive to criticize the Soviet authorities. In doing this the Soviet Estonian bicycle films adheres to the dynamic of the Glasnost film.

KEYWORDS:

• Bicycle race
• nationality
• Estonian cinema
• sports film
• sport journalism

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our gratitudes to Eva Näripea and her colleagues at the Estonian Film Archive for their help and assistance in researching this paper. Our thanks also goes to Raul Tammet för agreeing to be interviewed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Filmography

American Flyers (John Badham, 1985)

En forårsdag i helvede/A Sunday in Hell (Jørgen Leth, 1976)

Imetegija võlg/The Debt of the Miracle Worker (Hans Roosipuu, 1984, 20 min)

Jalgrattataltsutajad/The Bicycle Tamers (Yuli Kun, 1964)

Kuhle Wampe (Slatan Dudow, 1932)

Küljetuul/Side Wind (Raul Tammet, 1983, 64 min)

Meie sõber jalgratas/Our Bicycle Friend (Hans Roosipuu, 1987, 9 min)

Proshchanie/Farewell to Matyora (Elem Klimov, 1983)

Sport, Sport, Sport (Elem Klimov, 1970)

Sportivnaya chest/Sporting Honour (Vladimir Petrov, 1951)

Stjærnerne og vandbærene/The Stars and the Water Carriers (Jørgen Leth, 1974)

Tartu maraton 1983/Tartu Marathon (Raul Tammet, 1983, 19 min)

Ülekanne 56:13/Transmission 56:13 (Hans Roosipuu, 1969, 10 min)

Vai viegli būt jaunam?/Is It Easy to Be Young? (Yuris Podnieks, 1987)

Notes

1. This nearly happened in 2007 when Alexander Vinokourov started as favourite in the most prestigious bicycle race of them all. Vinokourov did not win Tour de France nor is he an Uzbek, but from Kazakhstan, but he was caught for blood doping and later withdrew from the race.

2. Soviet cinema was concerned with environmental issue since it was a way to criticize the capitalist West and hence connect to Western socialist movements. Although we should be careful with the term ‘Soviet environmentalism’ (Bruno 2016, 21), there is evidence of a concern for nature and the exploitation of nature within the context of Soviet cinema, e.g. in films like Klimov's Proshchanie/Farewell to Matyora (1983), which was initially banned, the destruction of nature is openly mourned.

3. It is scripted by Nikolai Erdman, who also penned Sporting Honour.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lars Kristensen

Lars Kristensen is a senior lecturer in media arts, aesthetics and narration at the University of Skövde, Sweden, where he teaches moving image theory to game developers. His research focuses on transnational and postcolonial filmmaking. Current research topics include bicycle cinema and the intersection between computer games, film and fine art. He is the editor of Postcommunist Film – Russia, Eastern Europe and World Culture (Routledge, 2012), Postcolonial Approaches to Eastern European Cinema (co-edited with Ewa Mazierska and Eva Näripea, I.B.Tauris, 2014), Marx at the Movies (co-edited with Ewa Mazierska, Palgrave McMillan, 2014) and Marxism and Film Activism (co-edited with Ewa Mazierska, Berghahn, 2015).

Christo Burman

Christo Burman is a senior lecturer in media arts, aesthetics and narration at the University of Skövde, Sweden, where he is currently the program director of Computer Game Development – Game Writing, giving courses in creative writing, dramaturgy and writing for interactable media. He has his research background within the fields of film aesthetics, reception and style, authorship and intermediality, with specific emphasis on the history of North and Eastern European cinema. Burman's doctoral thesis dealt with the subject of theatricality in the works of Ingmar Bergman. Furthermore he has written a book on the theme of the Apocalypse in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and was the editor of the first Swedish edition of Tarkovsky's diaries, published in 2012.