11 minute read
COVER STORY Ove Musting
Ove
AN EXPERIENCED DEBUTANT
1991. The last USSR Premier Basketball League Championship. Estonian team Kalev makes history. Blood, sweat, and tears are in the air. Outside the basketball court the singing revolution is gearing up. Estonian Film talks with the director Ove Musting about the film that is the Estonian nomination for the Academy Award for the Best International Film.
By Aurelia Aasa Photos by Riina Varol
ve, the triumph of Kalev basketball team in 1991 is one of the highlights in the history of Estonian sports. Do you remember where you were at that moment? We were at home with the whole family, watching TV. In the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s we all lived under one roof – my mother and father, brothers-sisters, grandma and grandpa. We watched all the television highlights together, be it a funeral of the head of state, or a sporting event. I remember the vibe of the era even more than the actual basketball game. My grandparents managed to escape deportation twice, but had such fear in their DNA until the end of their lives, that they didn’t believe that Estonia could remain independent even after it became a sovereign state. I remember finding our national flag – blueblack-white – from the grandpa’s attic, or pantry. I took it home and put it on the television set. When granny saw it, she freaked out and hid the flag. Only in the Nineties, I cannot recall if it was before or after Kalev’s win, did they reinstate the flag on the television set. I don’t remember it myself, but my dad said that the game made him cry afterwards. It was something so powerful, a little nation’s victory over a big one. I intentionally left the geographical map in the film, to show the scale of who we were up against. But I was afraid too back then. In the 1990s, tanks entered Lithuania. We were in a geography class, discussing if there is going to be war or not. Now, on the 24th of February, Estonian Independence Day, when Russia invaded Ukraine, I felt goosebumps and the same nasty feeling that I had experienced as a kid.
Besides a sports triumph, your film Kalev talks about the process of Estonia becoming independent, and the atmosphere of the so-called Singing Revolution that also permeated the world of sports. Kalev was criticized for taking part in the “Soviet event” back then. How much did you rely on facts when telling your story? Jaak Salumets, head coach of the team, gathered all the articles, interviews and printed news-bits about Kalev at that time. A huge amount of material. I was actually dead scared that I will be crucified by the sports journalists after the premiere, because the prototypes of the characters criticizing Kalev in the film are still alive today. In the film, they remain anonymous, and I didn’t mention any names to the actors on purpose. In some way, the journalists in the film are symbolic of the thoughts and emotions of
our society at that time. They are not malicious, and their questions are honest, just uncomfortable. Hard to say if they were right or not. I’d personally say that it’s a travesty to lambast everything with an open flame. It’s much harder to offer constructive criticism. But it’s to be understood: when the nation is about to become independent, and meanwhile, the sports team is competing as a so-called member of the Soviet Union, it evokes conflicting feelings. When they began winning, everyone was suddenly on their side.
Amongst other things, Kalev is posing the question, if sports can be separated from culture. Can it? I think it’s impossible. People like stories and narratives, and in those days, the burning question in the air was if someone is wearing an Estonian or a Russian name, is one of “us”, or one of “them”. This kind of analysis is going on in people’s heads all the time. Everyone tries to give some accent or add some extra colour to their opinions, to justify either hating or loving someone. Fandom is a sort of friendship or partnership as well. When people separate, they often become the worst of enemies, although they’ve shared their most intimate secrets. The same with idols. You have given them all, even the feelings you won’t share with your family. You cry, laugh, and scream. An athlete becomes a part of you. And when he loses or gets caught doping, you feel betrayed. It creates anger. It’s interesting what happens with people who attach themselves to something or someone, only to cast them overboard later.
It was the producer Pille Rünk who approached you with Kalev. What drew you to this story? The story itself. I think I sat down and pondered why on earth hasn’t anyone made a film about this grand event yet. I agreed instantly! Next to the sports story, this is also my personal story. Me at school, afraid that war will break out. Guys who are my age have texted and written to me later, thanking me for reminding them exactly what it felt like back then. I think that’s the biggest achievement of this whole effort – the ability to give people a chance to relive those emotions.
As the film revolves around professional sports, the actors were cast according to their physical capabilities. Please describe that process. I would even start from further back, because I deliberately chose actors, not athletes. Actors have thoroughly studied how to impersonate someone else, so the actors have much more shades in their palette for mental and physical transformation. They began with the general physical
Ove Musting graduated from the Tallinn Pedagogical University with a BA in Audiovisual Arts. Having worked on a number of short-films, TVC-s, music videos, TV shows and multicamera shows, he has 20 years of work experience.
FILMOGRAPHY Kalev, feature, 2022, director Traitor, season 2, TV series, 2021, director Dear Friend, You Have My Respect, short film, 2010, director & co-scriptwriter 30 Minutes of Silence, short film, 2010, director & co-scriptwriter Paradise for Old Men, short film, 2005, director & co-scriptwriter (The Cultural Endowment of Estonia Award for Best Picture 2005)
OTHER Founder member of punk/rock/folk/metal band Winny Puhh Founder member of post-country/folk/pop band Aednikud Co founder of circular economy platform smartswap.com Co founder Downtown Pictures (downtownpictures.com)
training at first, then started a more basketball-specific training, shooting hoops and such, bouncing the ball without looking at it, and so on.
The second challenge was to recreate the actual gameplays that were used. We watched the games with the trainer Aivar Kuusmaa, and I picked out which plays I would like to have in the film. Together with the screenwriter Mehis Pihla, who is a great basketball fan too, we tried to figure out how many games we should have in the film in the first place, so that the action would not become repetitive. Next, Kuusmaa sketched all the movements of the players. Then it was down to us to decide how to place the actors in the schemes.
After that, we drew the plans, and how to shoot the schemes together with the cinematographer Rein Kotov. I went to the basketball workouts and ran along the court with a photo camera to see what works and what doesn’t. We shot some test scenes and saw that damn… some things don’t work at all. There was a lot of testing like that. And we changed stuff during the shoot too. My wish was that we could make the audience feel like they were in the middle of a game, physically amongst the players. So that they would see and feel the movement of the ball.
In Kalev, Russia and Estonia are depicted as quite grimy back in the day. Was the Kalev team a sort of symbol of Western life, with their Adidas sneakers and Levi’s jeans? When I interviewed the Kalev team, they said they didn’t sense poverty, and evidently, they also had opportunity to travel. They could visit the USA and buy clothes that others here didn’t have. Due to their position, all the players were able to obtain their own living spaces, and they were driving their own cars – a luxury for most Estonians. This shows that they had better access to resources than most. But I wanted to show poverty, nevertheless. I remember from my childhood that we lived in our own house in the country. We had shelter, but no luxury. I had an idea to show, how they are doing increasingly better throughout the story, and the sponsors come along. At first, they snap their shoelaces, later they are wearing Velcro sneakers. It was important to me personally, because there was a time when I took a bus to another town, to go to the market and buy myself my first white high-tops. First Reeboks that were designed exactly like Reebok but said Reobak. The soles gave way after a month and water got in, but I kept on wearing them, inspired not by basketball players but 1990s American metal bands. We didn’t want to depict the nineties with a clichéd grotesque – “Colourful clothes? Check. Comical headbands? Check. Moustache? Check.”
I tried to steer clear of this, and keep the focus on the story, not the comical depiction of those times that often prevails over the actual stories about the nineties. We had quite extensive discussions about what the visual language should look like. Our nineties are largely shaped by the end
of the eighties. It’s a huge work: in addition to the team’s outfits, you need to figure out what the summer clothes, winter clothes, outfits of the opposing team, and the spectators should look like. Production and costume design departments had their hands totally full.
Kalev is a thoroughly masculine movie, and is somewhat in contrast with the stories trending on the international scene. Are you worried that there’s too much testosterone in the film? Good question. We hear opinions about anything and everything. For instance, there was an idea about how the film should end for one of the protagonists, etc. I decided that I am not ready to do it, if it didn’t take place in real life. Reality offers opportunities and angles you’d never be able to invent. I’m sure there are geniuses like Stephen King, who can come up with anything, but the situations are usually based on something real. My hands were quite tied, because members of the Kalev team were categorically opposed to certain themes. The subplot of Kuusmaa and his wife is in the film because Kuusmaa was generous, and it wasn’t a problem for him to bring his family into the story. The question I have been asked most is why is there so little of Tiit Sokk, who was the main player back then; I must say I was more intrigued by Kuusmaa, as someone who is more controversial with his conflicts, passion, and burn out. Hence, he and his family are more in focus. But it felt like nonsense to bring a gender balance in by force. It felt more honest to make a straight… I wouldn’t say, men’s film, but a film with men. It felt artificial to start creating storylines that didn’t exist. There are so many films and TV shows these days, where you can sense that certain themes carry only marketing value. It feels dishonest. And in the case of our story, it felt more truthful to keep that emphasis.
Kalev is your debut feature film. You have directed a lot of ads, plays, and shows for television, and you’re a musician as well. Was directing a feature a dive into unknown waters for you, or did you feel at ease? More like at ease, because I have directed short films too. Naturally, a feature-length film is a different form of cinema altogether, but I have experience with big projects and the amount of preparation with the accompanying tension is similar. I get it, the film industry despises television, but when I make a live TV broadcast, the tension is not less. These projects are very work-intensive too. For me, music videos are the place where I can let go completely.
It’s cool because I can pull out all the stops when I am making a music video for my own band. It’s the biggest creative freedom. I know it’s self-torture to make music videos for free, but I would recommend it to all the directors, because it helps you to hone your own skills and signature style.
Kalev premiered internationally at Warsaw IFF, and is the Estonian nominee for the Academy Award in the Best International Film category. What do you think the experience will be like for foreign audiences? When we started making Kalev, the initial idea was to do it with the local audience in mind. We wanted to bring the film out last year, on the 30th Anniversary of Kalev’s historical win, but COVID made that impossible. I think this story will be understood by audiences of our neighbouring countries, but the further away you get from the previous Eastern Bloc, the more complicated the story is to understand. Today when our Eastern neighbour is trying to overrun us all over again, the topic becomes relevant, and we understand that nothing has changed in 30 years. History repeats. Maybe the events of Kalev will be easier to understand, given the current situation. What I look forward to the most, is to sit at a screening with the audience and see how they react. EF
