DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR
DIRECTOR: JAAK KILMI
ESTONIA / FINLAND, 2009
Disco was accused of a lot during its brief reign, but did it cause the collapse of the Soviet Union? Kilmi’s witty and original film posits that American soap operas and disco dancing had as much to do with the Soviet Union’s demise as did any political movement. For young Estonians growing up under the repressive thumb of Soviet ideology in the 1970s and ’80s, the only images of the West they saw came in the form of pirated television signals from powerful transmitters in Finland. But the impact of these images was life-changing. Once Estonians beheld “Dallas,” disco, racy soft porn, and “Knight Rider,” not to mention supermarkets full of goods unavailable to them, there was no turning back. DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR playfully tells the story of a strange, subversive information war where totalitarian control met easy defeat against the heroes and insidious pleasures of capitalist popular culture. (80 mins.)