NAINE - a woman -
the film
a film by Eléonore de Montesquiou
music: Tatjana Kozlova and Malle Maltis
with Olga Tüvi
15 minutes
black and white
original language: Russian
English/French or Estonian subtitles
Images: archive images of women bathing and today’s images of women bathing in the river Narva, border between Estonia and Russia. / Sound: monolog by Olga, a woman with both Russian and Estonian passports, making a living by crossing the border daily. Olga was born in the fifties in the Soviet city of Narva-Ivangorod now split between Estonia and Russia.
Olga is in her fifties. She has both Estonian and Russian passports, by nationality she is Russian, and she speaks only Russian. She was born in Narva (now Estonia) and lives in Ivangorod (now Russia), two cities facing each other on either side of the river Narva. Olga speaks about herself as a woman of Perestroika. In this film she talks about going through these times with two children. She raises the issue of living on the very edge of Europe and tells about her relationship to work then and today.
Olga used to work in a factory, the factory closed in the mid-eighties, she then got a job in a hospital in the city of Narva. However, since she had been given a flat in the (now) Russian part of the city, she lost her job when Estonia became independent. After having worked on markets for some years, she now crosses the border twice a day to earn a living. She is the leader of a little group who uses the limits of the system –authorised amounts of goods- to carry various commodities in their bags from Russia to Estonia.
The images were made with a video camera during summer 2008. I filmed Olga and her friend, another Olga, bathing in the border river Narva. Their bodies reflect the strength and resistance they have needed till now.
The film is edited on the sound track, a mix of Olga’s voice and sound composed by Tanja Kozlova, an Estonian-Russian composer I have worked with before (see enclosed the film “SILLAMÄE”, 2006).
I dissociate image and sound, I also let Olga talk alone, therefore not shaping it as an interview, but as a monologue. More than a personal portrait, in this film, her voice speaks for numerous women of her generation, living in between the former Eastern-Soviet States and Europe, imagining day to day solutions to survive in this precarious and constantly changing status.