The News Tribune (WA)_‘Singing Revolution’ recounts Estonia’s path to freedom (June 27)

27.06.2008

 The documentary “The Singing Revolution” offers a detailed look at an overlooked chapter in the story of the collapse of the Soviet empire. Using archival clips, news footage and scores of talking-head interview segments, the husband-and-wife filmmaking team of James and Maureen Castle Tusty give an account of how the people of the small Baltic nation of Estonia bloodlessly broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Conquered and occupied repeatedly through history by Swedes, Danes, Germans and Russians, Estonia suffered particularly egregiously during World War II when it was occupied first by the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany and then again by the Soviets. Each time, the film explains, the occupiers terrorized the population with mass arrests, executions and deportations of thousands of Estonian citizens to Hitler’s death camps and the Stalin’s Gulag.

This sorry chronology of events is related in grim tones by narrator Linda Hunt.

The Iron Curtain came down hard in Estonia as Stalin dispatched nearly half a million Russians to the country, whose population was a little over a million, to dilute the ethnic and social homogeneity of the populace. Displaying the national flag was banned, and the Soviets imposed other measures designed to destroy the nation’s cultural identity.

The film reveals that a longtime tradition of Estonians participating in mass music festivals in which tens of thousands gathered to sing native songs served as a kind of communal glue that held the social fabric together during the decades of repression.

The Tustys salt the film liberally with sequences showing these song festivals, some filmed decades ago, others from the present day. The message is clear: The custom is a deeply imbedded and powerful unifying force. The sound of those massed voices is lovely and stirring.

The so-called Singing Revolution began in 1988 when Estonians began singing national songs, banned by the Soviets, at a series of song festivals. The largest of these took place in the capital of Tallinn, where an estimated 300,000 people, nearly a quarter of the population, gathered to sing the country’s unofficial national anthem.

From then on, the movement to reclaim the nation’s sovereignty grew. And accompanying the movement every step of the way, the film emphasizes, was the sound of songs of pride and patriotism.

The movie’s talking heads include ordinary citizens and key political figures who all participated in the events that culminated with the declaration of Estonian independence on Aug. 20, 1991. The road to independence was perilous and culminated with an incident in which unarmed Estonians linked arms to protect a vital TV transmission tower from Soviet armored forces, an incident that receives plenty of screen time, and rightfully so.

The movie is densely packed with historic and political details that often give the film the feeling of a tutorial in Estonian history. But while the Tustys’ filmmaking is often stodgy, the story and particularly the music of “The Singing Revolution” are unfailingly compelling.

Soren Andersen: 253-597-8660 * * *

The Singing Revolution

In English and Estonian, with English subtitles

Directors: James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty

Cast: Narrated by Linda Hunt

Running Time: 1:34

Rating: Unrated; scenes of wartime violence

Where: Grand Cinema, 606 S. Fawcett Ave., Tacoma; showtimes, Pages 22-23

http://www.thenewstribune.com/ae/story/399071.html

soren.andersen@thenewstribune.com