Cinema
Noored kotkad
Theodor Luts · 1927
Synopsis
1918: the Estonian republic has just been born, and thousands of volunteers leave to defend it. Among them, three young men whom nothing had brought together, the student Tammekänd, the blacksmith Laansoo and the farmhand Lepik, join the people's army. We follow them on reconnaissance, on marches and in hard fighting, side by side, while the enemy advances on the young country.
Context
Shot during the summer of 1927 in Tartu, in a courtyard fitted out as a studio, and near Mustvee and Värska, with more than four thousand extras, the film was released in Tartu in November 1927, and the police had to hold back the crowd on the day of the premiere. Aksella Luts wrote the screenplay with her husband and played the second female role. Kept out of view under Soviet occupation, it was nevertheless preserved by the archives; eight reels out of ten survive. Digitally restored in 2008, it received a score made up of pieces by Estonian composers, recorded in 2007.
Who it is for
Eighty-seven minutes of silent film, with intertitles in Estonian. It helps to know that two reels out of ten are missing, and that the film was long invisible in its own country.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the cornerstone of Estonian cinema and as the highest achievement of its pre-war fiction, one of the few films of that time preserved almost in full.