14 minute read
DIRECTOR Jaak Kilmi
AlwaysActionin
Jaak Kilmi is one of the most productive Estonian filmmakers. As a film director, producer, cameraman, or screenwriter, he has participated in more than 40 films of various lengths and genres.
By Johannes Lõhmus Photos by Viktor Koshkin
His filmography includes diverse productions, such as provocative documentaries about Estonia getting to know the mysteries of capitalism in the early 2000s (A Living Force, The Art of Selling), playful and enchanting historical documentaries (Disco and Atomic War) as well as historically authentic youth films (Revolution of Pigs). He has even made a refugee comedy with elements of suspense (The Dissidents), and a feature film about a modern Christ living in Siberia (Christ Lives in Siberia).
Recently Jaak completed a new thriller for children and their parents titled The Sleeping Beast.
You just returned from Kenya, what was the aim of your trip? We made the documentary Out of Fashion in 2015 together with fashion designer Reet Aus; the film was about the way our clothing is made, how big the environmental footprint is, and the negative impact on our planet. We mainly filmed it in Bangladesh, it focused on the fashion industry. Now we are working on its conceptual sequel Completely Out of Fashion, this time with garbage and people as the focus. Namely, the majority of used clothing in Europe is exported to Africa. Disposing of these clothes into landfills is expensive, and the whole continent is literally drowning in unwanted garments. So our aim is to study the journey of our used clothes after we have discarded them.
In my opinion, there is a strong aspect of the exotic in your films, and by this I don’t mean only Christmas in the Jungle that takes place in Indonesia, but it seems to be a leitmotif. Christ Lives in Siberia has already a totally exotic theme; Disco and Atomic War demonstrates the exotic mentality created largely by Finnish TV inside of the huge and monotonous Soviet Union; and your documentaries from the early 2000s were all based on very exotic characters. Even in The Sleeping Beast, the focus lies on the ensemble of historical buildings attracting the attention of village children from their boring daily life. Why are you obsessed with exotic elements? I guess something that I once read about the famous Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi and his La Traviata has subconsciously affected me. The opera that is now a great classical piece of music premiered in 1853 – but back then it was booed by the audience, people were throwing tomatoes during the premiere. Why? Because it was an opera that was set in the very time it was performed, the singers wore the same costumes as the people in the audience. But the viewers were
repulsed by a contemporary piece – what they yearned for were the beautiful ancient times, either Egypt or Assyria. Nabucco offered the audience exactly what they wanted – but La Traviata presented them with some kind of a daily familiar life. In a way, I keep thinking of this story, and ask myself whether this kind of exotic in my work is what I need to get myself going. That’s why I like films depicting a certain era where I can create another kind of a world in order to take the audience on a journey into an exotic environment. The journey may not have a familiar appearance, but it tells a human story and tackles contemporary themes. I am trying to create a fairytale while making use of film magic – just like some kind of carnivorous plant that lures you closer and closer in order to swallow you.
If you realize that your idea fails to offer exotic experience, will you then stop working with the film? I wouldn’t say that. However, creating a different world is something that has always attracted me. I also have the feeling that this is what the viewer expects. Film director Marko Raat, a friend of mine, once commented on a film that included too much life and too little art – in my opinion, this sharp critique hits the nail. If you make actors rant naturalistically on the screen so that it seems close to everyday life, then I ask myself: what’s all that? One cannot lose the artistic dimension in the film.
The last two feature films represent a new direction in your long-term filmmaking career – child protagonists and stories including children. Please describe the process of your creative practice – what’s your story as a film director having arrived at this point in your career? For a long time, I had the feeling that making children’s films is something for those filmmakers who have children themselves. Today, I have children myself, between ages from 6 to 17. At one point I understood that there are no films for my kids to watch; everything I was doing received as some kind of father’s work. They had no interest in it, and it was not recommended viewing by children of their age. That is certainly one of the reasons why I got inspired by the genre. Another reason is that the themes in children’s films can pose a challenge – the themes for children should not necessarily be light, the theme may also be very serious. For instance, childhood traumas influence people for the rest of their lives. Problems that for adults can be something to overlook, may seem tragically hard for a child.
The kids need to find action for themselves and pretty soon the summer takes a turn for the dark. The mother (Evelin Võigemast) is a worrier and the father (Anti Kobin) works abroad.
What is the childhood trauma to be solved in The Sleeping Beast? The protagonist faces a strong moral dilemma where the main issue is whether keeping a secret within a group is more important than human life? What will happen if the secret comes out in the open? On the one
hand, the protagonist doesn’t want to betray his friends; on the other hand, he realizes that this game is a question of life and death, and his friends won’t understand that. For adults, such issues may seem easy to find solutions to, but we should know how difficult it may be for children.
You have made numerous documentaries using lots of amateur actors. How did your experience as a documentary filmmaker influence the process of working with children? The documentary actor is convincing for the audience if the actor believes his or her being in front of the camera and lives a normal life despite the adjacent camera. A good documentary filmmaker must have developed the so-called unerring gaze in order to define both natural and unnatural moments. If there is something the protagonist wants really bad and there is discomfort included due to certain conditions, then the existence of the camera is often forgotten. This
Jaak Kilmi in action. He finds great excitement in working with young actors and works hard to get them into having belief in what they do.
also applies to a children’s film. Child actors need to have faith in what they are doing since any kind of formal behaviour cannot be hidden. I really enjoy working with children – especially when you succeed in making children believe in what they do, it’s very exciting. Undoubtedly, I have also heightened expectations towards child actors.
How did you make the child actors of The Sleeping Beast believe in what they have to do in the film? I have five mischievous rascals acting in The Sleeping Beast – I had quite a hard time with them, and yet their energy was just so cool. The film has been shot quite in chronological order – there was playing and hanging around in the beginning, followed by suspense, and the final conclusion. It was extremely interesting all the time, since I knew exactly what I wanted and did not give up before I got what was important. And this succeeded largely thanks to the month-anda-half long testing period before the filming. We had recited the whole story with the children so they knew the final destination well – where the group of friends will reach and what will happen. We changed the screenplay quite a lot during the rehearsals, the majority of the dialogues had to be rewritten, and that’s where the children contributed a great deal through their improvisation. So at the film location, everything took place according to the script. When working with such a complicated psychological feature, the testing period is always essential for me.
How do you characterize yourself as a film director when you are working with children? Self-establishment is absolutely essential, especially with children on the set, but also when working with actors in general. Actors must trust and believe in the director.
When working with children, the question of authority is important. I developed my role already when making Christmas in the Jungle. No small talk or befriending on the set. I do not communicate with the children when we are not working. When we meet during the filming, we only talk about work, that’s it. Naturally, there are people in the film crew who entertain children and help them to relax – but when the kids arrive on set and meet the director, they will work for the final result. Everything has to be organized in a way that all the participants understand we are doing really exciting work, where there is no space for conflicts or throwing one’s weights around. When a child actor is aware of this, then everything will succeed. When children know that our collaboration is terribly cool and important, they will contribute to the fullest, and do their work with joy.
The Sleeping Beast begins just like any other adventurous children’s film set during a warm summer. When adults enter the game, the first impression starts to fall to pieces. What is the role of a child in the world in your opinion? This is something I have been thinking about a lot. What would be good for a child, how would it be possible to grow up without trauma and violence. It is important that children could trust other people, that their worries and problems won’t be ignored or disregarded; they must feel that their parents support them and listen to them at home. If the first reaction to any kind of children’s behaviour by their parents is ‘don’t tell me again that you have done something’, then the child will unfortunately sense mistrust towards their parents, and things are being told only to friends of their own age.
What about the trust between children and parents in The Sleeping Beast? All of the problems of the film’s children would have solutions if they could have been able to talk to their parents; but they couldn’t since their needs were ignored. The parents of the children in The Sleeping Beast completely disregard the world that is so important and exciting for their children.
Kristjan, the protagonist, comes actually from a nice family – even if his father is often away, but who is a cool guy, and his mother is caring but worries a lot. Mother’s excessive worrying is the reason why Kristjan starts to hide things in order to protect his mother. But it is not a child’s job to protect their parents. Parents have to be there for the children, and prove that they can manage their life. I think this film will pose numerous challenges to parents.
Director Jaak Kilmi loves sports, especially skiing and running. What are your plans after the completion of The Sleeping Beast and Completely Out of Fashion? I am writing the next screenplay for our next children’s film that we call a children’s horror film, in collaboration with Aidi Vallik, the screenwriter of The Sleeping Beast. The title is The Raven’s Stone, the story is based on the ghost tales of Võru county written by Juhan Jaik. The film, with elements of mythology, takes place in ancient times where the Tatars have destroyed a village and taken the villagers as slaves. The protagonist, a nine-year-old boy, tries to make money by freeing farm houses from ghosts, in order to buy his father out of slavery. But before this film, I am going to take on another film project, a very dark suspense drama taking us back to the late 19th century, where the poet Juhan Liiv is going to solve extremely brutal and raw murder mysteries.
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3 IMPORTANT FILMS IN JAAK KILMI’S FILMOGRAPHY
1. Beauty of Fatherland (Doc, 2001) 2. Doc A Living Force (Doc, 2003) 3. Revolution of Pigs (Feature, 2004) 4. The Art of Selling (Doc, 2006) 5. Disco and Atomic War (Doc, 2009) 6. Out of Fashion (Doc, 2015) 7. Christ Lives in Siberia (Doc, 2015) 8. The Dissidents (Feature, 2017) 9. My Father the Spy (Doc, 2018) 10. Christmas in the Jungle (Feature, 2020)
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This is going to be a series, and the first pilot episode is a full-length feature for cinema distribution, titled The Shadow.
Also, together with Kiur Aarma we plan to make a full-length documentary about the Juminda maritime tragedy in 1941 – a spatial film journey that we made for the exhibition at the Seaplane Harbour. So, besides making films, I really enjoy also making exhibitions.
How can you survive such an intense load of productivity and ideas? This has always been a problem among Estonian filmmakers, that you constantly have to initiate new projects in order to make both ends meet. This is a bit like a pyramid scheme. Today, I try to clean my desk of projects, in order to dedicate myself more to one film, and address all my productivity to the preparatory process of films. In fact, the only thing that keeps me healthy is physical activity, I practice sports almost every day. I would go skiing every day if possible. The ski track is the place where I can totally switch off; skiing with a high pulse rate is something that is vitally and psychologically important for me. This provides me with the feeling of utmost presence, both the mental and emotional restart, so I would later be able to give something to the world. EF Evelin Penttilä
Evelin Penttilä, producer of The Sleeping Beast:
When we first met with Jaak in 2015, he told me about where the idea for The Sleeping Beast began. We are connected through the belief that films should provide hope and courage. This is something that creates the possibility for building various diverse worlds. Even now, we have ideas in different phases. Jaak is someone who is always involved in so many other processes, so it happened that before The Sleeping Beast was completed, his film Christmas in the Jungle, filmed in Indonesia, reached the cinemas and he dragged me into that collaboration as a co-producer. I enjoy working with Jaak because of his energy, liveliness, immediacy, and buoyancy. When he arrives at a place, he will be completely there, present; even if there are times when he arrives with a little delay, since he has always so many ongoing projects. There are always people who want to partake in Jaak’s ideas and energy. For Jaak, all ideas must be authentic and sincere – he is always reflecting on these stories through his personal filter that is never moralizing. For me, the journey that led me to The Sleeping Beast has been a huge lesson about how to trust the people and the world surrounding us. More than once, there have been critical situations when we had to change our plans, while hoping that this would lead us to the result that touches the audience. For me, The Sleeping Beast is a very important film because it is my first full-length feature after Zero Point – the feature where I have been collaborating as the executive producer since its beginning. When making this film, it has been our priority not to underestimate children as an audience, but to take them as equals. Since the film tackles themes that everyone can relate to, we really hope that it will also offer both excitement and moments of recognition to an adult audience. I am very grateful to Jaak that he decided to include me in the film project – and I hope this will be only the beginning.
