Introduction

From time immemorial, wars have been a major engine inducing massive waves of dislocation. While Europe, including Estonia, currently stands at the receiving end of one such tide, the most recent armed conflict that propelled extensive emigration from Estonia was World War Two. This chapter examines two cinematic representations of one of the most dramatic collective journeys of Estonian history – the massive Soviet deportations of Estonians in June 1941 and in March 1949. Belonging to an emerging wave of Baltic films inspired by the tragic events that uprooted tens of thousands of natives in these countries, both Martti Helde's feature-length debut Risttuules/In the Crosswind (2014) and Ülo Pikkov's animated short Kehamälu/Body Memory (2011) stand out for their inventive audiovisual design. In the Crosswind mesmerises its audiences with a stunning image track. It is composed of a series of tableaux vivants, with the camera roaming the three-dimensional spaces around human figures frozen in moments of despair. Body Memory is equally penetrating in its minimalist visual form, which is employed to present an experimental and abstract narration of the memories related to this traumatic journey, inscribed into the collective body and mind of the nation. While Pikkov's Body Memory is an allegorical tale of the collective bodily memories of past sorrow and pain, Helde's In the Crosswind concentrates on the story of a fictional twenty-seven-year-old Estonian woman named Erna Tamm who was deported to Siberia in June 1941. Helde draws on the letters of his relatives, but also on other memoirs and archival material documenting the deportations (Bencze 2014). Based on these, he offers a powerful account of the nightmarish journey that lasted for Erna until 1954, when she was finally allowed to return to Estonia, only to discover that her husband Heldur had died in a Siberian prison camp shortly after their separation.

This chapter investigates how Body Memory and In the Crosswinds engage with the Stalinist deportations and (collective) memories of them, concentrating in particular on the ideological aspects of narrating national history and identity.