Tales of a lost decade: Estonian film noir in the 1990s

ABSTRACT

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Estonia experienced a radical socio-economic transformation process. In this article, we examine how this reconfiguration of society finds its expression in Estonian film noir of the 1990s. The transformation process generated spatio-temporal effects, reflecting the neoliberal conversion from the public to the private, and shifted the axis of identification from horizontal to vertical. The new constellations of power generated centripetal and centrifugal effects, creating winners and losers, the included and the excluded. The 1990s Estonian films noir focus on the losers of a period that was considered by many Estonians as a lost decade. Similar to American film noir of the 1940s and 1950s, the portrayals of doomed characters in a universe without moral points of orientation reflect the paradox of the rise of individualism in a world where the domestic sphere is in crisis. The doomed protagonist, the visual and narrative bleakness of the 1990s Estonian films noir, is the subject of our chronotopic analysis. The dark side of post-Soviet transformation, both in socio-economic and psychological terms, resonates in these films. We argue that the chronotope of the 1990s Estonian films noir is the outopia, the no-place.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-Soviet cinema
• Estonian cinema
• film noir
• chronotope
• neoliberalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Cf. Sobchack's suggestion that ‘in terms of chronotopic motifs, lounge time could well include bus and train stations and their waiting rooms’ (Sobchack 1998, 159).

2. The film was shot between September and December 1991 (see Rumm 1992).

3. Literally, as suggested by the high-rise abode of the gangsters, filmed at the TV Tower, ironically once an important location for the events of the Singing Revolution.

4. For more on the contemporary manifestations of the eutopian/outopian, see Hoyer (2017).

Additional information

Funding

Eesti Teadusagentuur [Project number IUT32-1].

Notes on contributors

Eva Näripea

Eva Näripea, PhD, is Director of Film Archives of the National Archives of Estonia, senior researcher at Estonian Academy of Arts, visiting professor at Tallinn University and founding co-editor of Baltic Screen Media Review. She has contributed book chapters to a number of internationally published volumes, and (co)edited a number of special issues and anthologies on Eastern European cinemas, including, Postcolonial Approaches to Eastern European Cinema: Portraying Neighbours on Screen (with Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen, I.B.Tauris, 2014). Her research interests include spatial representations in Estonian cinema, histories of Eastern European science fiction film, and reflections of neoliberalism in recent Estonian cinema.

Dirk Hoyer

Dirk Hoyer, PhD, is a German born filmmaker, lecturer and artist who currently lives in Estonia, working as a lecturer of audiovisual arts at Tallinn University's Baltic Film, Media, Arts and Communication School. He completed his doctoral project (ap)art at Aalto Arts in Helsinki in 2015. In addition to his doctoral research on utopia, his present focus is on film history (especially the rediscovery of Dimitri Kirsanoff in Estonia), political documentary, script consulting and the influence of social networks on the development of the self.