- Occupation
Director - Country
Estonia
Liiv Urmas Eero
Congratulations
Capitalism produces both progress and regress. On the one hand, the economic competition accelerates fulfilling the needs of people. On the other hand, the struggle for existence creates humans with abnormal perspective of live. The countries in prosperity soften this dilemma by intervening nationally.
Home of the Sun
About 400 years before the birth of Crist, near the village of Kali, on the island of Saaremaa, a gaint meteorite hit the Earth. It`s light, sound and force deeply affected people living hundreds of kilometres away. For example, from the Swedish coast it has appeared that the sun was setting in the East. Closest observers thought that the sun had been stolen.
Greetings from Soviet Estonia!
“Everyone owns a house, nice furniture, a radio and a television set. That’s more than we ever dreamed of!” The people in Kolkhozes were happy, as this film from the 50s shows. At the time, Estonia was one of the most western republics inside the USSR. Today Estonia lies on the eastern bounds of Europe. Surveys held 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union show that more than half of the Estonians who had witnessed the Soviet era feel more positive about the past than they do about the present. But was Estonia really the socialist paradise that it had presented itself as in the news, commercials and documentary films of the time? “Greetings from Soviet Estonia!” contrasts a series of eastern nostalgia-laden filmic documents from the 50s to the 70s with the accounts given by three former dissidents – MEP Tunne Kelam, nun Lahle Parek and emigrant Tiit Madisson. Their memories raise images of another, less harmonious Estonia.
Capitalism produces both progress and regress. On the one hand, the economic competition accelerates fulfilling the needs of people. On the other hand, the struggle for existence creates humans with abnormal perspective of live. The countries in prosperity soften this dilemma by intervening nationally.
Home of the Sun
About 400 years before the birth of Crist, near the village of Kali, on the island of Saaremaa, a gaint meteorite hit the Earth. It`s light, sound and force deeply affected people living hundreds of kilometres away. For example, from the Swedish coast it has appeared that the sun was setting in the East. Closest observers thought that the sun had been stolen.
Greetings from Soviet Estonia!
“Everyone owns a house, nice furniture, a radio and a television set. That’s more than we ever dreamed of!” The people in Kolkhozes were happy, as this film from the 50s shows. At the time, Estonia was one of the most western republics inside the USSR. Today Estonia lies on the eastern bounds of Europe. Surveys held 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union show that more than half of the Estonians who had witnessed the Soviet era feel more positive about the past than they do about the present. But was Estonia really the socialist paradise that it had presented itself as in the news, commercials and documentary films of the time? “Greetings from Soviet Estonia!” contrasts a series of eastern nostalgia-laden filmic documents from the 50s to the 70s with the accounts given by three former dissidents – MEP Tunne Kelam, nun Lahle Parek and emigrant Tiit Madisson. Their memories raise images of another, less harmonious Estonia.
Urmas E. Liiv (b. 1964) graduated from the Chair of Film and Video of Tallinn Pedagogical University as director in 1998. Since 2001, he has worked as creative director of the private channel Kanal 2, Estonia. He has written, directed and edited numerous documentary films, including the award-winning popular scientific documentary Home of the Sun. Liiv is also the instructor of the art and history of editing.