The world’s first film specifically produced for an exhibition was displayed in the American Museum of Natural History back in 1930. In the 1960s the Estonian National Museum also began to collect actively ethnographic film material during fieldwork, but its use in exhibitions was marginal. The films at the museum’s new permanent exhibition, ’Encounters’, however, contribute significantly to the visual and content identity of the display and invite visitors to engage in a social and cultural dialogue. Along with the showcases, the films create a visual rhythm in the display hall, and their visuals and sound accompany visitors throughout the entire exhibition. By virtue of presenting diverse perspectives and their integration with the surrounding display, the films can visibly and audibly join in the discussions that ’Encounters’ seeks to elicit.
The films of ’Encounters’ focus on the past and present inhabitants of the territory of Estonia, primarily, who have their subjective views and particular life experience and through whom an exhibition visitor can gain an insight into the broader cultural and social context.
If in the past, museum films and display items were strictly curated, with the power to create and distribute knowledge concentrated in the hands of curators-filmmakers, then at present the role of museum visitors examining the material has increasingly become more active. Without a recourse to the voice-over or music, which prescribe to the visitors how they should perceive and construe the content, visitors can experience and decipher the films independently. Without the curator’s direct didactical intervention, visitors are free to assign a personal meaning to the themes presented. The films of ’Encounters’, which are unconventionally slow and long-lasting for contemporary people, offer a challenge and opportunity for thoughtful reflection.
My own video exhibit ’Stories of Freedom’, which presents the thoughts of nearly 80 inhabitants of Estonia on the subject of freedom in the form of videotaped interviews and written citations, explores meanings and ideas that are abstract and nonmaterial but universally inherent to human beings. The documentaries of Marko Raat take a detailed look at various processes and work techniques from traditional as well as modern life. His films deal with some cultural practices that are still in use but inevitably vanishing as well as some contemporary practices such as a day at a supermarket checkout belt, or activities in the kitchens of top chefs.
Raat’s scripted portrait films summon up the lives of people from the past. By his use of aesthetically eclectic and stylised form instead of maximally accurate reconstruction, the filmmaker deliberately minimises the possibility of the films being seen as accurate representations of history. Although the films are not historically faithful depictions in terms of their aesthetics, Raat has used archival documents and authentic museum objects as the films’ source material. Thus, by building on historical documents and objects, he has created characters who tell their real-life stories on the vertical screens, look into the eyes of the visitors and go about their business. The text of archival documents has been brought to life in a historical re-enactment, and the use of authentic objects illustrates the context in which these objects were originally used.
When film is integrated with other materials, such as written citations in the video exhibit ’Stories of Freedom’ or traditional costumes in the film ’Clothing’, we are able to detect connections and associations which would not have emerged in isolation. By observing the exhibited items through the perspective of the people who have used and experienced them, such as the traditional dress that an elderly lady from the island of Kihnu puts on, we can also sense more keenly the meaning of these objects. Their story becomes visible through the perspective of the user.
The exhibition films can also efficiently describe daily life from thousands of years ago, of which there are no visual records. For instance, the experiment of grinding a stone axe in the film ’Touchstone of Patience’, gives us a sense of what people in the Stone Age had to routinely endure. Combining film with some authentic stones exhibited nearby, enhances the communicative potential of each exhibition item which would not be as great without such a juxtaposition.
Traditional work practices, goods placed on the supermarket checkout belt, thoughts on freedom expressed by people with different age, social and cultural backgrounds comprise an important ethnographic material which will unlock stories of modern Estonia in a diversified and polyvocal manner in the future as well.
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