Dir: Jaak Kilmi
Country: Estonia
Year: 2009
Duration: 80mins
Print Source: welcome@autlookfilms.com
www.autlookfilms.com
During the height of the Cold War, the people of Tallinn, in Northern Estonia, a few miles from Helsinki, were able to witness the freedom of the West thanks to television transmissions broadcast by their Finnish neighbours. An entire generation grew up under communism but watching Finnish and American TV, seeing life in the free world via Dallas and Knightrider. Families and friends crowded around TV sets tuned to the West thanks to the availability of illegally constructed aerials.
This beautifully crafted documentary tells the rarely heard and often hilarious story of western television signals and the darkest depths of the Cold War, detailing the strange effects both had on the inhabitants of countries behind the Iron Curtain. Welcome to a strange place where a totalitarian regime was undermined in part by the pop-culture of the seventies and eighties.
Screens with Rock n Roll Mudwrestling
Winner Best Documentary, Warsaw International Film Festival 2009
Winner New Vision Award, Rome Independent Film Festival 2010