Disco and Atomic War (2009)

Disko ja tuumasõda (2009) - External reviews, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1421032/externalreviews (18.03.2013).

Kilmi’s childhood memories hit screens

Disco and Atomic War is a playful film about the influence of Western pop culture on Soviet kids during the Cold War. Co-written by producer Kiur Aarma and Kilmi, it describes the ideological battlefield of the time, mixed with personal childhood memories.
"It was a time when it was possible for erotic film star Emmanuelle to bring down the Red Army and MacGyver to outdo an entire school administration,” recalls Aarma.
For Kilmi, the film describes his generation that was “unknowingly brought to the front lines of the Cold War. Our brains were bombed with television waves. This completely changed our lives”.
by Annika Pham.
http://cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&lang=en&documentID=94378 (18.03.2013).

J. R. Ewing Shot Down Communism in Estonia

Imagine growing up in the Estonian capital city, Tallinn, during the cold war and discovering “Dallas” transmitted by television from Helsinki across the Gulf of Finland. In the eyes of the Communist leadership, that American serial with its jousting millionaires epitomized the creeping allure of capitalist decadence.
In the facetiously lighthearted documentary “Disco and Atomic War,” the director Jaak Kilmi, who grew up in Tallinn in those days, recalls how the exploits of J. R. Ewing and company mesmerized his city in the far north of the country, where the broadcast infiltrated the Iron Curtain.

A playful compendium of archival footage, dramatic reconstructions with a surreal comic edge and solemn talking heads, “Disco and Atomic War” persuasively makes the case that the “soft power” of Western popular culture seeping in via radio and television was instrumental in the breakup of the Soviet Union.
You have only to remember the birth of rock ’n’ roll in the United States to realize the unstoppable power of popular culture in the mass media. The sexy insurgent music that exalted limitless individual freedom and self-expression was irresistible. In a way Elvis Presley was to American culture in the 1950s what “Dallas” was to Estonia two decades later.

Other TV phenomena that galvanized Tallinn, Mr. Kilmi recalls, included the series “Knight Rider” and the Finnish television premiere of the French soft-core movie “Emmanuelle.”
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: November 11, 2010.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/movies/12disco.html?_r=0 (18.03.2013).

If you want to see a documentary about the battle for the minds of an entire nation between two super powers this is the movie to watch. Even if you’re not interested in the power plays between superpowers, you might want to see this documentary just to experience childhood once again through a very different set of eyes. It’s an eye opener.
Disco and Atomic War / Textually Transmitted, http://textuallytransmitted.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/disco-and-atomic-war/ (18.03.2013).

Disco and Atomic War (Disko ja tuumasõda)

The idea that news and other images might be transmitted widely took hold. A TV transmitter was built near Helsinki and the pop cultural tide, though at times reduced to a trickle, turned essentially unstoppable. Even as Soviet newspapers reported that “Finland wanted to dehumanize the Soviet people, especially the youth, with violence, cruelty, and sex.” But the youth reading such stories knew another truth, that they felt informed and even somewhat freed by the images now available to them. That is, the shift in thought and desire was expressly generational. Historian Esko Salminen recalls that the increasing popularity of American programming—from Kojak to Knight Rider to Star Wars—led to the erection of a veritable “forest of antennas,” as families sought access to an outside world.
By Cynthia Fuchs, 12 November 2010.
PopMatters, http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/133509-disco-and-atomic-war-disko-ja-tuumasoda/ (18.03.2013).

The result is such an intense, apocalyptic surrealism that you’re never sure if what you see is fact or sci-fi.
What makes Kilmi’s docu-comedy so believable, shocking, and profound is his ability to show and tell without blinding us with graphic details. This cunning minimalism makes palatable what could very easily veer into yet another diatribe. Perhaps this 80-minute film’s greatest strength is its ability to provoke questions in all of us, who too often take television broadcasting, the Internet, and contemporary global culture as some magical given that has always been here. Disco and Atomic War is a definite must-see for anyone who takes life seriously with a twist of comedy.
Film-Forward Review: Disco and Atomic War, http://film-forward.com/discoand.html (18.03.2013).

How Southfork Brought Down the Soviets in Disco and Atomic War

With tongues partially in cheek, director Jaak Kilmi and screenwriter Kiur Aarma, who grew up in the same neighborhood of Tallinn, Estonia, in the '80s, lay out the case that Cold War Soviet rule of their country was fatally eroded by Western pop culture, in the form of Finnish television broadcasts that drifted across the border. Narrating in deadpan English and weaving together incredible footage from Soviet archives and unmarked re-creations that almost pass for real home movies, Kilmi and Aarma detail their boyhood obsessions with the illegal airwaves, the seduction of entire families by disco dance shows and Dallas reruns, and the increasingly absurd, ultimately futile lengths taken by the Soviet state to maintain some semblance of control over the viewing habits (and thus, the hearts and minds) of the body politic. Aarma and Kilmi deconstruct the notion of soft power, acknowledging both its short-term sexiness (literally, in the case of a broadcast of Emmanuelle that allegedly touched off an Estonian baby boom) and its long-term effect (not even fictional images of a free-market democracy in which "everyone drinks whiskey on the rocks, [and] everyone is a millionaire" could inspire meaningful lasting sociopolitical change). If another contemporary nonfiction film makes a better case for the still-controversial tactic of blending scripted scenes into factual footage, I haven't seen it.
By Karina Longworth Wednesday, Nov 10, 2010.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-11-10/film/how-southfork-brought-down-the-soviets-in-disco-and-atomic-war/(18.08.2013).