The founders of Estonian animation

NATALIE JENKINS, LJI Reporter

Carefully balanced between absurdity and delicate childhood innocence, Estonian animated films carry a certain allure that has been renowned on the world stage.

But at what point did Estonia develop its particular animated visual culture, and who can be credited for this?

While Estonia produced some experimental animations in the 1930s, film historians commonly trace the country’s animated tradition to key figures who worked for the Tallinn-based film studio Tallinnfilm.

Elbert Tuganov

Elbert Tuganov.

Photo: asifa.net

Though born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1920, Elbert Tuganov lived in Germany with his aunt until he moved to his mother’s home in Estonia in 1939.

Tuganov found work at Tallinnfilm as a cameraman’s assistant. Over the course of eleven years, Tuganov filmed, drew, and painted credit sequences and special effects. Importantly, he also modernized the studio’s rather rudimentary animation technology. “Originally,” says Tuganov in Chris Robinson’s book, Estonian Animation: Between Genius and Utter Illiteracy, “they used to nail the credits to the wall [and film them by a] camera set up on a tripod.” But he discovered a more effective method: by building an animation stand, camera operators could do frame by frame shooting, permitting a higher degree of freedom and leniency in the overall creative process.

Motivated by the encouragement and praise from his colleagues, then-37-year-old Tuganov established the department of animation at Tallinnfilm Studios in 1957. Called Nukufilm, Tuganov’s department focused exclusively on puppet animations.

Despite the Soviet Union’s tight restrictions, Tuganov managed to carefully weave satire into the larger mosaic of his films. But Tuganov went further than mere mockery. With every film, he offered a peek into a new world, accessible to both the innocent child’s imagination and the mature adult’s mind. By taking aspects from Estonian identity and intertwining them with those from the West, Tuganov created a cohesive whole in his characters that seemed to dismantle the implacably opposing worldviews found on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Even the films’ settings worked in the same way. “[The] colour palettes [in our films] were beautiful and somehow different [from Moscow’s],” said Tuganov in Estonian Animation. The vivid colours that Tuganov referred to are reminiscent of those from the 1950’s American Pop Art movement, said Robinson, as well as the bright tones commonly associated with American design and architecture from the same period.

Heino Pars

Heino Pars.

Photo: elu.ohtuleht.ee

Heino Pars grew up surrounded by Estonia’s idyllic landscape. “I had a strong connection to nature,” said Pars in Estonian Animation. “My father had a large garden and I remember that springtime was the most beautiful when the apple trees were in bloom. Our trees were 30 years old then and when their branches touched each other, it was like a large roof of flowers. Back then I’d climb an apple tree and sit up there for hours.”

After moving to Tallinn, Pars was hired at Tallinnfilm, eventually working at Nukufilm. Together, Pars and Tuganov collaborated on many projects. With Tuganov and Pars running the show, it made perfect sense that Pars was promoted to be a director of Nukufilm alongside Tuganov in 1962.

Like Tuganov, Pars laced his films with a childlike sense of wonder, innocence and curiosity, drawing inspiration from his time spent in nature.

Perhaps the films that best exemplify Pars’ personal style are those from his Cameraman Kõps series. These films were Estonia’s first animated series, featuring the recurring protagonist, Cameraman Kõps, who travels to various scenic locations, ranging from mushroom lands to berry forests.

Robinson says: “For the fourth film ‘Operaator Kõps kiviriigis’ (Kõps in the World of Rocks, 1968), Pars and his crew went to the Leningrad Museum of Natural Science.” Quoting Pars, he continues: “...We were very well received by the museum in Leningrad… The staff even brought things out of storage to show us what they normally would not have. I remember they brought out a beryl [a gemstone] that supposedly cost I don’t know how many million. They took it out of the safe. I was afraid to even hold it in my hands. That was very interesting indeed.”

Together, Tuganov and Pars represented the lighthearted side of Estonian animation. But that changed when Rein Raamat joined the picture in 1972.

Rein Raamat

Rein Raamat.

Photo: efis.ee

Born in 1931 in a small town in central Estonia, Rein Raamat eventually graduated from the Tallinn Art Institute. After spending some time working at Nukufilm, Raamat founded Joonisfilm, Tallinfilm’s first department of animated cartoons (as opposed to Tuganov’s puppet animations), in 1972. As a director, Raamat encouraged collaborations with professionals from other fields, including writers, musicians, and artists to work together on his films.

Moreover, unlike Tuganov and Pars, Raamat’s intended audience were adults. Even when Moscow’s restrictions on what could be portrayed in film tightened, Raamat insisted on portraying more mature subject matters and blatant criticism of the state.

His film Suur Tõll (1980) perfectly exemplifies this. Through a fever dream-ish display of visuals done by Estonian artist Jüri Arrak that resemble a bad LSD trip, accompanied by Estonian composer Lepo Sumera’s hair-raising score of screams, the film tells the story of the Estonian mythological figure, Suur Tõll (Toell the Great), a giant who guards the island of Saaremaa from foreign enemies. The climax of the film culminates in a violent fight between enemy forces and Suur Tõll, until he is decapitated and falls to the ground.

It is hard not to read this sequence as a pro-Estonian nationalist/anti-Soviet sentiment, where Suur Tõll represents the valiant and unyielding Estonian facing foreign occupation, and the enemies, dressed in red, represent the Soviets. In fact, the film was met with heavy criticism from Moscow. Despite this, it went on to be praised on the international stage, even winning an award at the 1982 Ottawa International Animation Festival!

Legacy

Together, Elbert Tuganov, Heino Pars, and Rein Raamat laid the foundations of Estonian animation, setting the stage for future artists to continue their tradition of fantastical, dreamlike storytelling.