KALAMEES Part 1

Darya Cherkashina — Fri, 01 May 2020 11:55:13 +0000

Camera and editing: Eléonore de Montesquiou
Original music: Tatjana Kozlova
with Sasha Kaliadine and Nastia Kaliadina

This film was made on the lake Peipsi which marks the border between Russian and Estonia.

Sasha is a fisherman. In the winter, he goes out with others for one day, on the frozen lakes and rivers. Each of them makes a hole in the ice and stays sometimes all day long, in the cold, waiting for the fish. It is both a common passion the fishermen share, leaving together for the daily adventure, and a very solitary one, they all sit apart from each other and hardly communicate.

Sasha grew up in Ivangorod, his parents were given an apartment in the highest building of the city, overlooking the river, the bridge, in a word the border. Now Sasha is in his late twenties, he works in Kreenholm’s fabric, in Narva –Estonia- he walks the Russian-Estonian border daily, he goes out at night in Saint Petersburg and doesn’t speak a word of Estonian

My film is a portrait of Sasha, of his silent fishing, how he is organised to resist the cold. Through this individual portrait, his words raise the issue of Ivangorod’s particular situation: what does it mean to live right on a border?

Eleonore de Montesquiou KALAMEES1

Eleonore de Montesquiou KALAMEES2

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NAINE

Darya Cherkashina — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 11:00:12 +0000

Olga is in her fifties. She has both Estonian and Russian passports, she speaks only Russian. She was born in Narva (now Estonia) and lives in Ivangorod (now Russia), two cities facing each other on either side of the river. Olga speaks about herself as a woman of Perestroika. In this film she talks about going through these times with two children. She raises the issue of living on the very edge of Europe and tells about her relationship to work then and today. Olga used to work in a factory that closed in the mid-eighties. More than a personal portrait, in this film, her voice speaks for numerous women of her generation, living in between the former Eastern-Soviet States and Russia, imagining day to day solutions to survive in this precarious and constantly changing status.

I filmed Olga and her friend, another Olga, bathing in the border river Narva. Their bodies reflect the strength that they have needed till now. These images are b&w in order to link them to the archive images.

Sound: monolog by Olga, a woman with both Russian and Estonian passports, making a living by crossing the border daily. Olga was born in the fifties in the Soviet city of Narva-Ivangorod now split between Estonia and Russia.

Music: composed by Tanja Kozlova (Estonian contemporary composer, who was born on the Russian side of the border and lives now in Tallinn)

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Montesquiou Eléonore de – Cyland Video Archive

KALAMEES Part 1

NAINE