The Circuit

by Will Tizard 
Despite just 4-5 hours of sunlight daily this month, Estonians are showing a new spring in their step, what with a bustling economy and new cultural attractions opening their doors in the charming 9th-century capital of Tallinn. Just a few minutes' walk from the walled medieval center of the small Baltic Sea port city, the year-old Kumu art museum is a major new draw even when it's not acting as a venue for the Black Nights film fest.

The 11-year-old gala (actually a collection of four mini-fests, culminating in a weeklong market, Baltic Event Dec. 2-6), is based around the Radisson SAS hotel, which offered a slice of realpolitik to arriving guests of the market. Russian residents of Tallinn stood in the drizzle for hours in a queue that snaked around the block, waiting to vote in the elections for Vladimir Putin at a foreign polling station housed in the same building.

The Russian legacy on the Baltic states is a theme bitterly considered in many regional films, such as the impressive-looking Latvian war pic by Aigars Grauba, "Defenders of Riga."

But it was an off-beat Estonian "not quite comedy" that had the market buzzing, Veiko Ounpuu's "Autumn Ball," an ensemble piece about six characters living out another creepy Soviet legacy, the mass housing blocks that ring the city.

Tallinn's contemporary pulse is a far cry from such surrounds, as clearly evidenced at the Baltic Event party at the UpUp lounge, sponsored by BMW, and at the city's charming, if chilly, Old Europe-style Christmas market on Town Hall Square, where festgoers took their airs.

The boom of the city, which is also developing a beachfront walk and a vast new cultural center, mirrors that of Estonian film production, at a historic high - not hurt by the newly established Baltic Film and Media School now fueling the drive. Fest director Tiina Lokk is appropriately a dynamo of energy - she even managed to be sure that the "tiny men" of Estonian holiday tradition put Advent treats in the shoes of her children each morning.