BLACK CEILING

© 2007 Eesti Joonisfilm
18’36” / 35mm / 1,85:1 / 1 reel / 515,0m / Beta SP 16:9 / HD Cam / colour/ Dolby Surround

Estonia’s first animated selection of poetry.  Seven short films full of feeling illustrating works by Estonian poets.

AUTUMN ELEGY 2’14”

Poet Heiti Talvik reads his freshly completed poem Autumn Elegy out loud to his wife Betty Alver. This is animated fiction.

THE VERY LAST CIGARETTE 1’46”

There is a Man in a squalid basement flat and a Woman in a fancy resort hotel in the Alps.  They share a shattered relationship.  The Man is in the homestretch of his degeneration. The Woman in on the last rung of the ladder to the top.  Both are embittered.  Today they both smoke their last cigarettes, the Man prior to his planned suicide, and the Woman planning to quit smoking. Deus ex Machina intervenes.  The Man’s expected suicide fails due to his inner uncertainty.  The Woman self-confidently races down the mountain into an unexpected gorge.

LIGHTS IN THE NIGHT 2’06”

A poem with a melancholy undertone about solitude and longing.  We see a row of windows of an apartment building.  Individual windows at first – some windows are dark, some are open and people bustle about, living, being born, dying, splitting up, rejoicing, being sad.  We briefly see around twenty tiny incidents in the lives of various people – as much as can be seen through an open window or an opening in the curtains.  This is perhaps only a completely insignificant and random moment, but nevertheless, if we imagine further, we can guess what might subsequently happen.  We see in our mind’s eye how people’s fate starts to branch out further, and all that could still happen.  We cannot participate in this even though we would like to.  Finally, moving away from the windows, all that remains of these windows and the lives behind them are but little light points in the black night sky – and stars are naturally distant and inaccessible.  They are incomprehensibly mysterious, just like perhaps the ordinary person living in the flat next door.

TABLEMAT OF BALTIC SEA 2’14”

The nature of longing is observed allegorically in the film Tablemat of Baltic Sea.  People’s longings as a rule remain hidden between their pillows, but what should the feathers in the pillow do with their longings?
In this film, two feathers perform a figure skating routine and draw Aleksander Suumann’s poem Tablemat of Baltic Sea on the ice.

A VEGETATED DIRECTOR 2’30”

One day, the General Manager discovers that he has become a plant.
This does not prevent him from flying to Brussels the following morning.

I FEEL A LIFELONG BULLET IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD 2’20”

A bullet in the back of the head loses its freshness with time. The person feeling the bullet loses the sharpness of the feeling.  Even while sleeping. The person is ecstatic.

SUBSTANTIA STELLARIS 3’30”

Ilmar Laaban’s poetry written in the Cosmos scatters like filings, builds up in our senses and spreads out in our bodies as stellar substance.

Film production supported by
ESTONIAN FILM FOUNDATION
ESTONIAN CULTURAL ENDOWMENT

Available on DVD