Returning from Precarity – 30 Decades of Rebuilding Estonian Film industry: A Case of Film Education

Abstract

Due to its idiosyncratic circumstances, the film industry of Estonia and its higher education system offers a compelling case study. Estonian language film education celebrated its 30^th anniversary in 2022. Three decades of its history are densely intertwined with the “second independence” period of Estonian state. It is a period of a nation state returning from a brink, film industry rebuilding itself from an almost full collapse and the three-decade long build-up of film education from non-existence to a highly specialized professional curriculum culminating with a student Academy Award-winning graduation film in 2020 (Minu kallid laibad/My dear corpses, German Golub, 2020, Estonia).

In order to have a birds-eye view of the 3 decades of Estonian film education build-up and its reciprocal relationship with the industry, the authors used a unique data source – the Estonian film database (www.efis.ee), which was opened in 2012 and is one of the most comprehensive national film databases.

For the article, EFD database was combined with a new data corpus created specifically for researching Estonian language film education, consisting of all students who graduated the intakes between 1992-2016 (the intakes of 2018 and 2020 were not included, because these intakes had either graduated too recently or hadn’t graduated yet). This data corpus was the basis of SQL queries to EFD database. One of the tasks of the queries was to track changes over time and also look into the effect of specializations within the curriculum.

The key finding concern that a small nation film education that produces active filmmakers, in the size of Estonian film industry has to resolve two aspects of teaching – the length of study and number of specializations. Our data confirms that (a) the duration of education is an important factor. Intakes that have been able to study for either 4 or 5 years have collectively achieved a stronger position in the industry than intakes who studied under the 3-year Bologna system BA and did not go on to a MA program. (b) professional specialization within a comprehensive multi-disciplinary curriculum promotes rapid advancement into the film industry. Large-scale change is visible connected to the introduction of a curriculum structure known in film schools as the “six-pack system”, i.e., where screenwriters, producers, directors, cinematographers, editors and sound designers’ study together, the same number of students in each discipline, comprising a skeleton crew of HODs (heads of department) for their student films.

Another key finding is that the career paths of graduate directors follow a similar pattern, but it is possible, through targeted interventions, to shorten the bridge between film school graduation and first feature film. Directing entails tacit knowledge, that can only be acquired through regular practice.