KEEL-the language-
video
20 minutes
2009
black and white
original languages: Russian and Estonian
images: Eléonore de Montesquiou and Sillamäe archives
music: Liis Jürgens
Participants:
Anastasia Neuimina
Riina Salak
Sergei Pogoreltsev
Anastasia Neuimina and Sergei Pogoreltsev are young Russian-Estonians who were born and educated in Tallinn, they tell about their experience with Estonian language and integration issues.
Riina Salak is an Estonian language teacher in a Russian kindergarten in A Russian area of Tallinn.
She explains how she teaches Estonian language to the Russian kids, or tries to teach them in one hour a week course.
She tells about language issues in Estonia, language being an integration tool or handicap was always highly socially and politically loaded in Estonia; the country having been occupied by Germans, then Russians who imposed their language on the population.
In my film are raised fundamental issues of displacement, integration into a new environment and education through relatively simple means if they are respected in childhood.