Eva Naripea (Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia) (ONLINE)
In 1929, Peeter Parikas, the head of Estonia-Film, the oldest and largest Estonian film studio and distributor of its time, urged the State Archives to emulate the ‘culture states’ and establish a specialised depository for collecting, preserving, and cataloguing the works of Estonian film entrepreneurs who lacked the resources to ensure the proper preservation and long-term care of their output (The National Archives of Estonia, ERA.1265.1.118, p.1.). Parikas’ plea eventually bore fruit in the mid-1930s. By 1 January 1937, the State Archives were charged with compiling a ‘chronicle of state events’, in parallel to which a collection of photographs and moving images documenting these occasions was to be developed. While Parikas esteemed ‘priceless value’ of ‘artistic and entertainment films’, the (authoritarian) decision-makers of the era prioritised the idea of moving images as historical records imbued with overtly political significance.
The moving images deposited at the State Archives until the outbreak of World War II laid groundwork for the collection now safeguarded by the Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia. This presentation employs the Film Archive of the NAE as a case study to examine the influence of legislative, discursive, curatorial, and technological factors, under different political systems, in shaping, preserving and providing access to a national film collection, as well as film culture in a broader sense, in a small country with a complex geopolitical background.