21-23 August 2012
2nd Arvo Pärt Centre Film Evenings
From 21 to 23 August 2012 the Arvo Pärt Centre presented three important films that make use of the work of the maestro.
Arvo Pärt has written original music for almost forty Estonian films. The best-known of these are probably the animated films Operaator Kõpsi seiklused and Väike motoroller by Heino Pars, Aatomik by Elbert Tuganov, the Antarctic documentaries Jääriik (Land of Ice) and Enderby – valge maa (Enderby – the White Land) by Andres Sööt and feature films such as Grigori Kromanov’s Briljandid proletariaadi diktatuurile (Diamonds for the Dictator of the Proletariat); Navigaator Pirx (Pilot Pirx’s Inquest), directed by Marek Piestrak as part of a collaboration between Soviet Estonia and Poland; and Leida Laius’ Ukuaru.
However since the 1980s film makers in various countries have used a lot Pärt’s concert pieces, music that was written for performance in concerts rather than specifically for particular films. At least 25 of Pärt’s works have now been used in more than 100 different films, mostly in European countries like Britain, Germany, France and Italy, but also in Asian cinema in Korea and in North and South America in both low-budget independent films and large commercial blockbusters. The Arvo Pärt Centre has started a presentation of some of the most important of these films.
The Centre’s film evenings were again held in Tallinn’s Katariina (St Catherine’s) church also this year. From 21–23 August the following films were shown: Beş vakit (Times and Winds, 2006) by the Turkish director Reha Erdem; the Georgian classic Monanieba (Repentance, 1984/87) by Tengiz Abuladze; and Izgnanie (The Banishment, 2007) by Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev. The principal common feature of the three films is the idea of the family as a model of the world as the internal and external forces that hold a family together over time or break it apart, or sometimes both at once, come into the central focus.
The works by Pärt that are most popular with film-makers around the world are the tintinnabuli pieces Spiegel im Spiegel, Für Alina, Fratres and Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten. The first two of these also featured prominently in the films shown last year. This year the choice of music in the film evenings was much wider: Abuladze’s Repentance uses Silentium, the second part of the double concerto Tabula rasa as a requiem, while Erdem and Zvyagintsev have placed less frequently heard Pärt pieces in their films, like Te Deum, Orient & Occident, Como cierva sedienta or Ode VII (Memento) from Kanon Pokajanen.
An introduction was made before each film screening. The films were shown in original language with Estonian subtitles.
Tickets in Piletilevi (4€) and at the church (5€).
The film evenings 2012 and the Arvo Pärt Centre were sponsored by Swedbank.