Providing (digital) access to Estonian film history

The Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia is responsible for the preservation and presentation of the national film collection that was established in 1937 and encompasses more than a century of Estonian cinema. Over the past two decades, access to film heritage has become increasingly digital – a process that has been further intensified due to the global pandemic. This presentation will concentrate on the on-going digitization effort that by 2023 will produce digital assets of 245 hours of newsreels, documentary and feature films produced by Tallinnfilm, the state-owned “republican” studio of the Soviet era. These will be made freely accessible to the public in Meediateek, a brand new iteration of our online database, as well as on a streaming platform for Estonian film, to be launched in 2022.

Eva Näripea is director of the Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia since 2014 and deputy editor of Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Routledge). She has published widely on history of Estonian and East European cinema in various scholarly volumes and academic journals, with a focus on spatial representations and the genre of science fiction. Founding co-organiser of the annual Baltic Sea Region Film History Conference, an international event that offers a platform for discussions on the past and present of the region’s film culture.