Paper short abstract:

The documentary is devoted to historical memory and focuses on the question who and how preserve the experience of Stalinist repressions in the memory of Estonian society today, and who will do it in the future. Director: Terje Anepaio; Maido Selgmäe Estonian National Museum 2011

Paper long abstract:

The 20th century has remained in the memory of Estonian people as an extremely contradictory one; it embraces the birth of the statehood, its destruction and regaining of independence.

The documentary "We Remember! We Commemorate!" is devoted to historical memory and focuses on the question who and how preserve the experience of Stalinist repressions in the memory of Estonian society today, and who will do it in the future.

This film is a result of the audiovisual documentation project launched by the Estonian National Museum in 2008 (project team: research fellow Terje Anepaio, head of the film and video studio Maido Selgmäe). The aim of the project was to focus on the community of people repressed by the 20th century totalitarian regimes in Estonia, asking what is a community's memory work, its practice and forms like in the e-Estonia of the early 21st century. The cooperation partner of the ENM was the Memento Rakvere Association.

Throughout one year (2008-2009) we followed with a film camera all the smaller and bigger undertakings of the Memento Rakvere Association.

The project resulted in approximately forty hours of recorded material in the audiovisual archive of the ENM.

The 53-minute-long documentary that was made on the basis of the project materials provides one of the possible answers to the question how we could pass on experience and memories to the future.

Director: Terje Anepaio; Maido Selgmäe

Duration: 53 min

Year of production: 2011

Location: Estonia

Production/distribution: Estonian National Museum

Language: Estonian

Subtitles: English/Russian