Sulev Keedus: My film education has gaps in it, because I never got a diploma in Moscow, although I made a full-length feature as graduation work - only two people in our year were allowed to make such a film. However, I had no wish to go and defend my diploma work in Moscow, because this was the time when the blue-black-white flag was already at the top of the Tall Hermann tower, and everything to do with Moscow seemed totally unacceptable. Besides, the diploma held no value for me any more.

Peeter Torop: I'd like to know how the script materialised. Watching "Georgics" I feel that the literary text there is meticulously composed. I first read it from the linguist's point of view. I seemed to be drawn into the film immediately, because it has quite lucid poetics. In that sense, "Broken Sleep" is much more complicated, the relations between text and picture are considerably more complicated. So: was the scriptwriting a continuous process, or did you initially have some sort of script, where you, and only you, made changes later on the set?

Sulev Keedus: People often ask what time or period is the most creative. To me it is the time of writing the script, because the period of filming includes many daily compromises, but the script can be approached directly, adding ideas, colours and smells, despite knowing well that much of it will not be realised in the film. In order to tune yourself and others, the script must be as detailed as possible. Unlike Madis Kõiv who writes every day, writing for me is difficult, although perhaps only because words seem even more banal than cinema. Writing the script for "Broken Sleep" started when I went to Kõiv with the word "somnambuul" (somnambulant). He was immediately attracted by both the idea and the word, as he had been wanting to write about autumn 1944 and spring 1945 for some time. The first version relied totally on his personal recollections, to some extent following the scheme that I had laid out. Alas, this did not work, so we met again and decided that I would write a new version. So I wrote 'autumn' and 'winter', but could not manage 'spring' and had to go back to Kõiv. We wrote 'spring' together, Kõiv dictated and I wrote everything down. It took us about one year. The first version, by the way, became Madis Kõiv's radio play.

photo: henri laupmaa

Peeter Torop: Do you perhaps occasionally divide the work so that Madis Kõiv writes more dialogue than Keedus?

Sulev Keedus: As for dialogue, I must first of all listen to it. The text has to sound natural, which is a precondition for proceeding to dramaturgy. Kõiv's dialogue... he calls it "material" where the director must make choices. When we had finished filming 'autumn' and 'winter', and went through the material, we realised that we had to make changes in 'spring'. To some extent we made them even while filming 'spring'. I don't think Madis Kõiv has even seen the film and has no notion of what happened with 'spring', because 'spring' on paper looks quite different from the end result.

Peeter Torop: Are you a drawing, designing director? Do you need stills at script level? Do you fix locations or the model of the world (slanting lighthouse, vertical and horizontal objects)?

Sulev Keedus: I have no talent for drawing, hence I don't do that. The drawing teacher at school was not satisfied with my people and animals -- said they were all square. A lot changes during filming, and the final decisions are made on the set. I don't need the stills, and the cameraman needs the sketches only to fix the lighting, but these are purely technical things to accompany the episodes.

Peeter Torop: I am asking that because watching your films, especially "Georgics", it seems that the geometrical aspect is highly significant. The same squareness on the one hand, which you just mentioned, marking the profane world, and roundness marking the other. The various angles and circles even had a mythological meaning there, but in "Broken Sleep" I didn't detect anything like it. Was the geometrical aspect of "Georgics" knowingly added?

Sulev Keedus: NO, it was quite spontaneous. How the camera moves or where it stands is pretty final.

Peeter Torop: That's interesting, because the geometrical poetry that I associate with your work is very compact. In "In Paradisum" the squareness is especially obvious, and part of it crops up in "Georgics" and a bit also in "Broken Sleep", which has many meaningful shots, such as door and window openings.

Sulev Keedus: "In Paradisum" was a fascinating experience for me, because I was the cameraman too. Previously I had made documentaries only as a director.

Peeter Torop: Coming back to "Broken Sleep", I understand that the word "somnambuul" was already there as a title or topic before the filming. However, it is not a topic the meaning of which can be easily found in a dictionary of foreign words. Linguistic symbols have a role here, besides unconsciously giving it additional meanings. I wondered what a person who has never heard of it might think of the word "somnambuul"? I was browsing through Edvard Munch's album last night and I perceived an association between "somnambuul" and Munch, for example with his painting "Dance of Life". Do you have your own version of "somnambuul" that has nothing to do with medicine or psychology? Should this be taken as a figurative title and not as a technical term?

Sulev Keedus: I have never regarded "somnambuul" as a medical term. I don't think "somnambuul" sounds very precise in any other language. It is difficult to explain, but in Estonian this word contains poetry and physics, both orally and in writing, and this is entrancing. Once I read this word, I could remember it forever.

Peeter Torop: In your previous film you tried to explain the title; the initial credits even have the title twice: first "Georgics" and then when leafing through "Georgics". Now you find a title and it does crop up once in the film, without you making any attempt to unravel the multiple meanings of the word. Was it intentional to have such a non-straightforward title, or a title that speaks through openness?

Sulev Keedus: The word "somnambuul" turned up in the script more often, but during the filming we avoided the medical side of "somnambuul". For us, the term for madness, sleepwalker or somnambulist were essentially wrong. The concept was that "somnambuul" was rather in the subconscious of all the characters, no more. I remember talking with Kõiv about dreams, and he opened the door of a large wardrobe that was full, from top to bottom, of A4 sheets of paper. He searched for a few minutes and then extracted three sheets. He had written down his dreams of 1938. I read dreams recorded in my friends' diaries. We argued, Kõiv and I, about whether the dreams of men and women were similar, and if yes, then where did the differences lie.

Peeter Torop: Let's take this again. The title is "Somnambuul", a foreign word for Estonians and I dare say also for foreigners, requiring some previous knowledge. It doesn't matter whether this knowledge associates the title with medicine and leads there, thus pointing to pathology, or whether a person is able to see the word in a wider context. Next comes a reference to a specific time: autumn 1944. Then sub-credits 'winter' and 'spring' and then the final credits, which connect all that with the summer of 1945, the end of the war and the period 1939-1949. A composition principle seems to emerge, but if you start looking at the film according to this principle, things don't add up. First, it is apparently a story about the fate of the Estonian people, but there is not a single character with an Estonian name, all are somehow either meaningful (Gottfrid), or refer to some playing with names. How should we see this in a historical context? I hasten to add that for me an additional possibility arises. The seasons are specified too, and the system of seasons, as we know, is a classically mythologising principle. Hence we have, on the one hand, a historical principle with concrete chronological time: we see the events of a certain period, one of the times when Estonians were leaving. There is talk of "the last boat", "the last ship", and then it's over. On the other hand, there is something eternal, which does not point to a historical film. Something connected with endless repetition, symbols, and a certain condition. Was this two-level approach intentional, or does the specific temporal frame matter more? It is after all very difficult to watch a film as something linear, but since place is not determined, the only thing that localises the action is the given temporal frame.

Sulev Keedus: I called the different time segments short stories and thus tried to film "autumn", "winter" and "spring" as separate stories, in order to produce a trilogy. I wanted the short stories to be different, and not only in the sense that "time has moved on". The tension, expectation or fear of the end should increase. The year 1944 does not, in fact, mean much to me or most viewers who haven't got any personal experience with that time. I remember asking Kõiv what we should write in the final credits. He said we had to mention some specific years, such as 1944-1945; we could not make "somnambuul" timeless. It would be wrong to say that it was a compromise. It was rather some sort of inner obligation to those who lived at that time.

Peeter Torop: Didn't it occur to you at some point that the names were too foreign, or not very 'audible' on the screen, except for Eetla.

Sulev Keedus: Estonians have few "audible" names. Once you have a Jüri or a Mari or Kalev, every viewer probably has a personal association. Gottfrid is from Naissaar, thus a coastal Swede. Eetla is Kõiv's character and I haven't asked him where he got that name. Eetla is certainly the only possible name here.

Peeter Torop: In this chronologically determined world, various events take place, and this is difficult to follow in the linear sense. The sequence of time actually disappears - what is before or after, there are several pasts and also a future. It was the same in the previous film, "Georgics", so this must be your 'style'- playing around with time. On the one hand it stands still, on the other it is possible to play around with it - the subjective time in the scenes is very different. In connection with experiencing time subjectively I had a problem with the film's genre. The film seemed first of all to be very epic, despite the small number of characters and the intimate atmosphere, not because of the loftily emotional text at the end. Maybe this is the sort of film that allows two types of interpretation. Psychoanalytical on the one hand - rape as such and all the fears that go with it, sexuality as such and the relevant symbols, a phallus or two can be found in nearly every shot, etc., all of which point to a neo-mythological film. This interpretation, however, does not take us very far. The other possibility is to examine the principle of epic theatre used in the film. According to that, the film continually uses a certain relativity without attempting mise en scène in the manner of psychological theatre. The actors are not expected to reveal their souls: they should not produce theatrical but rather cinematographical work, which in theatre corresponds to the principle of epic theatre. The actor seems to be a mediator of the text that he or she does not have to self-revealingly experience. For me, for example, Eetla - especially at the beginning of the film - is someone who experiences through commentating. She talks about what she has been through, and seems to experience everything while talking. It's a kind of shift: apparently we witness a direct experience, but in fact it's only a commentary on her own or her mother's earlier experiences. A kind of intonational alienation occurs. I am therefore interested in learning how you worked with the actors regarding the intonation? I am asking because I'd like to know how the body has been used in the film. A simple statement is that Keedus is a man and the film reveals how a man sees a woman, but this seems a bit too simplistic. The other possibility: the body is a relative means of expression, and all the scenes that seem absurd, in terms of logical psychology, fit perfectly on another level. All those reactions of Eetla in front of the mirror, lifting her skirt on the beach, etc. where a very nice sequence emerges.

Sulev Keedus: My aim was to make explosion possible for the actors. The most difficult and controversial parts of the film are Eetla's monologues, which raised grave doubts already in the script - this is not film, but theatre at best. I remember that when the actors read the script they liked it, but film experts didn't think much of such domination of the monologue, not believing that this would work. While writing monologues I listened to them and had a pretty clear idea of their melody. At the same time I fully realised that when people talk about their dreams nobody wants to listen to them for very long. There may emerge a fascinating situation in a dream, but to talk about it for a full minute... it's not possible in life, but it is possible in theatre. The question was whether this was also possible in film. Katariina Lauk had no inhibitions; she flung herself into Eetla's monologues and made them credible. I didn't have to direct her much. The tonality was right and the melody emerged itself. Any monologue could, of course, have been ruined by one wrong word or intonation error.

Peeter Torop: This morning I heard the opinion of a young Finnish film director who said this film could also be seen as satire...

Sulev Keedus: I see no grounds for that whatsoever, although we were advised to have "liberating" situations in the script where the viewer can laugh and feel comfortable. These rules are present in every drama textbook. For me, the screen time is so dense and concentrated that I would hate to use handicraft tricks that make the viewer feel more comfortable. Quite the opposite - we tried to take the film to viewers using means that were as minimalist as possible.

Peeter Torop: I try to have sympathy with a colleague, and I think that if there's any satire here at all, then maybe it is directed against psychoanalysis. The film has a lot of nudity, many sexual symbols, and a few scenes where a tub is hoisted on a tall pole against the background of the slanting lighthouse, etc. What's that tub anyway?

Sulev Keedus: It's a bird's nesting box... Many have said, interestingly, that the most frustrating episode was the death of the cow in the church. For many, this seemed to have crossed the threshold of pain. I fully agree. When the sound was being edited in Finland, I got a phone call saying it was still possible to remove that episode, and whether it was necessary. "Good taste" had to be consciously overcome here, although for me the border was not crossed. Incidentally, there was no church in the script. The scene was originally set in the yard of the Tagaküla farm. During the filming we realised that the village landscape was wrong. We searched, but did not find a location where we wanted to film. Finally we settled on Pöide church, partly because the local pastor said that everything a human being is able to do has been done there already. The only thing missing was dragging boats into it - now we've done that too.

Peeter Torop: Talking about space, it seems that there is no such thing in the film as topographical precision. The world here cannot be grasped, you have no idea of the distance between various buildings, and there are no all-embracing general plans.

Sulev Keedus: The fact that I have not been able to explain any geography to viewers is certainly a drawback. If I had to abandon something, it would be geography and I'd focus on the characters. Without people the landscape is often full of unnecessary 'rubbish', and as for the lighthouse, this is such a kitsch element that it's very difficult to film in such a way that it wouldn't start breaking up other elements. I have seen a few films with lighthouses and people around them, and later I mostly remember the lighthouse.

Peeter Torop: There are nevertheless numerous shots where the space is being specified in a higher sense. Take the very beginning: indistinct sounds of radio, then music, with people continually eager to catch war news on the radio, hence the acoustic aspect of space. The other aspect is the split or restricted nature of space, because right at the beginning there is a return from water, stressing the border between land and water. More shots follow where the shot is halved between land and water; there is quite a lot of similar spatial dividing, such as talking through the door. Were these borders determined in the script?

Sulev Keedus: The maintaining and achieving of balance was indeed one of the key ideas. I can imagine that autumn 1944 was a time when people who had kept their balance so far were starting to lose it, and were compelled to make a move that would determine their fate, a move that a tightrope walker must never make. As for the picture, it was already there while looking for a location - we didn't have to erect anything except Gottfrid's house, and nature dictated it. We built the film space primarily as a sound space. The atmosphere in cinema is, after all, created by what we hear, because we see only the surface.

Peeter Torop: By the way, I had a very interesting experience today when one of my students, a deaf mute, having watched the film, described to me how he heard a soft sound at the beginning. He said it resembled the "jingle of electrical wires". He perceived acoustic experiences with pictures, which was amazingly precise, because the film indeed has soft sounds of flute there. An acute topic is the symbols used in the film. For me, as a Russian philologist, the stuffed birds immediately connected with stuffed birds in Russian literature, even with Chekhov, where a seagull does not symbolise hope, but death. Two motifs seem to be connected: rape, and staying and leaving. At first they were not easily associated, but sat together in my head. The final credits tell about those who stayed or were "taken back", but not about those who stayed of their own free will. Is there an attitude here that distinguishes between the different fates of Estonians? Talking about the impossibility of leaving ...

Sulev Keedus: Regarding going and staying, "Broken Sleep" tells about those who stayed.

Peeter Torop: That's interesting, because in my opinion the film is more about leaving.

Sulev Keedus: I agree. Staying was in a way even a crazier leaving than the actual leaving. I have no preferences, I'd rather like to understand the motives of why some left and some stayed. Again the problem of balance: when does someone feel that he must break off, and if he does so then what does it mean for him. Loss of balance certainly. Hence the film's undertone, called hopeless and inevitable, for which the authors are perhaps blamed. At the end of the film viewers are confused, as if they had suffered some violence. They wonder whether everything really could have happened like this?

Peeter Torop: I have heard opinions that the film is hopeful, optimistic. We are living at a time when the Estonian identity is still at a fragile state of development; people gather biographies. At some point the biographies of the deported were gathered, then we moved on and gathered the life stories of Estonian exiles. It is odd, but the recollections and memories of both the deported and the exiles are often almost sunny, because, thanks to their diligence and language skills, they achieved more than the others. Your film tackles traumatic memory that is a new level of memory, a kind of auto-therapy. This provides the film with a fascinating socio-cultural background.

Sulev Keedus: I have a feeling that if the film had been completed five years later, it would have been too late. In fact it's too late now, maybe a few years ago would have been better.

Peeter Torop: "Georgics" and "Broken Sleep" seem to be two parts of the same film: connected time-wise and a bit by the topic, plus a certain sacralisation (serving the souls, staying attached to the land, etc.). What about a third film?

Sulev Keedus: These connections have emerged in the course of time. I started "Broken Sleep" as an entirely independent film. Therefore no third film at the moment. I am quite empty at present, but it is probably only natural and logical to have a little respite. To make a feature film in Estonian circumstances ... I think it's going to get even tougher, for a few years. The feature film may not be a magnum opus but it comes pretty close. And to write something grand today... it does not need to happen dozens of times in a lifetime.

Interview conducted on 24 September at the Estonian Institute

Sulev Keedus (1957), film director. Three latest films are "In Paradisum" (1993), "Georgics" (1998) and "Broken Sleep" (2003), all of them have won several prizes. Forceful representatives of author's cinema in the 1990's.

Peeter Torop (1950), semiotics professor at Tartu, focusing on translation semiotics, Russian literature and film semiotics.