The premiere of "Revolution of the Pigs" resembled a rock concert rather than a full-length feature film. The hall, seating over a thousand, was filled to the rafters with young people dressed in the jackets of Soviet-era construction brigades for schoolchildren, and any dictator would have been thrilled by their ovations. Luckily, the howling mass of youngsters, saluting the world with their middle fingers, were not hailing a party führer or a communist presidium. Instead, this was the recognition of themselves and their film-makers, an unrestrained self-celebration, a collective spontaneous eruption in a cultural context.

"Revolution of the Pigs", the debut work of the two young film directors Jaak Kilmi and Rene Reinumäe, who have become known in Estonia as a talented tandem, depicts the rebellious life in the Estonian schoolchildren's construction brigades in 1986. The humorous paradox is that the 500 young persons chosen for the mass scenes for the "Revolution" in summer 2003 were still in diapers in 1986. No wonder that Soviet reality for them is something "wild and romantic" from the distant past, just as the 19th century Alaskan gold fields are for me.

stills from the movie. photo: vahur puik

Life always seems better where I am not; imagination tends to idealise, so flee the frustrating reality into a world of fantasy. Someone who has never been whipped by the Soviet monster or had his fingers crushed in a slammed drawer by the KGB cannot judge or fear this beast directly. It is, however, exciting to evoke dangerous apparitions from the past, play around with zombies and the idiocy of totalitarianism. Youth means opposition and a challenge to the old. If you fail to spot a specific enemy amongst the post-modern multiplicity, your freedom is certainly lacking spice, and life may taste like pig slops.

The slogan of "Revolution of the Pigs" declares: "In order to become independent, there must be a revolution." However, if the revolution is organised for you, forcing the ideology down your throat and trampling justice under foot, you rebel - either on your own or as part of a crowd. There are always free spirits, budding and flaming, who refuse to be raped. What does a 16 or 17-year-old, on the other hand, know about revolution as such? His awakening hormones are more likely urging him to an unchecked revolt within his own body, which might well lead to a spontaneous mass revolt.

The Kilmi-Reinumäe film depicts an opposition. The Komsomol is trying to carry out a collective rite as a standard initiation approved by the Communist Party. The energy of youth must be gathered and channelled early on into communist construction work. This is why the Estonian Soviet construction brigades were established as early as the 1960s. Under the supervision of group commanders, young people filled simpler tasks in collective and state farms during their summer holidays, receiving in return a handful of roubles and moderate brainwashing. In the "Revolution" the brainwashing and educational activities are often crudely caricatured.

In reality, supervisors, nominally communist, might easily share a cigarette or a beer out of solidarity with their students. It was not very likely that they would fling hysterical abuse and coarsely red slogans at the youngsters they had to look after, as the film suggests. In 1986, hair was not shaved off, even when prisoners were locked up for hooliganism for 15 days. It very much seems as if this film, which purposely increases the element of violence, is not actually meant for Estonian viewers who remember '86 themselves, but for a wider foreign audience who might react more enthusiastically to more spectacular and blunt conflicts. The construction brigades did not haul up huge posters showing the three classics of Marxism-Leninism staring into the bright future. Such monstrous canvases could be seen up to 1985 at parades in Moscow's Red Square or Tallinn's Freedom Square. By summer 1986, however, Mikhail Gorbachev had already put forth notions such as perestroika, uskorenije and glasnost in the press, and the Estonian Communist Party leaders were anxiously waiting for new directions from the avant-garde in Moscow. Political prisoners were gradually returning from Siberia; punk evenings were held in the literary club of the Tallinn Pegasus cafˇ; the spirit of the Phosphor War against the planned mines in Estonia was in the air.

The film, however, which so obviously overdoes the political context and thus twists the truth, did not annoy me too much. How things were in real life is not actually very important in art. The roaring soundtrack, on the other hand, provided "Revolution" with a totally hysterical, almost schizoid background. There was no question of there being any real characters; even the crowd of types remained superficial and fragmentary. Only a few old-school theatre and film actors, playing the roles of commanders, managed to stand out from the mass.

"Revolution of the Pigs" has been called an anti-film and accused of eclecticism; it is certainly hysterical, but at the same time, and primarily, a manifestation of a genuinely erupting force. What irritated me most was the split between the romantic-political revolt and the kitsch love story in the background. The herd of pigs thundering off to freedom, as a symbolic twist at the end of the film, was weak compared with all the previous confusion.

From the point of view of composition and narrative, the film is one big, screaming cock-up. Dozens of irritants form a single cacophonic cannonade, where the Sturm und Drang of reckless and contradictory youth rocks. I am not entirely certain if, in the context of this opposition, the director tandem can be declared semi-irresponsible. At the same time, one must acknowledge the artistic-social experiment that the film project no doubt was. After all, it fully restored the construction brigade milieu and gathered together 500 young people to bring it to life.

Such an indeterminate film had never been made in Estonia before, and critics are hard put to place it anywhere or compare it with anything. I might sound naïve but I wouldn't be especially surprised if "Revolution" were at least included in the competition programme at Cannes. I certainly hope it is.

The Soviet Union has formally disintegrated, but the metastases and mutations of that horrific concoction still lurk. Nostalgia for the Soviet times mostly lingers in the hearts of those 50 to 70-year-olds who were much better off, socially and financially, back then. I was a reserved night watchman and greenhouse worker, who fostered cautious relationships with dissidents. Young people who were still unborn, or sucking their ice-cream cones at the time, today have a whale of a time desecrating the "symbols of revolution". The advert for "Revolution of the Pigs", for example, shows a black pentagon with beret and snout-sporting Che Guevara staring out of it. Who can forbid stuffing a crucifix into a urine bottle, or refuse to acknowledge "Revolution" as a manifestation of Soviet power, absurd in form? Revolutions, however, have a habit of devouring their own children. It was really lucky that the piece of veneer that came off the huge advert in the cinema's grand marble entrance hall did not come down on my head and split it in two.

Tarmo Teder (1958), writer and film critic, nominated the best film critic in 2000. In the words of Jan Kaus, chairman of the Writers Union, "Teder's world is considered naturalistic, rough and mean, but it is not in fact lacking in humour, profound tragedy, warmth, dreams."

Revolution of Pigs (2004)
Directors: Jaak Kilmi and René Reinumägi
Synopsis: In the summer of 1986 hundreds of young people have gathered into Estonian student summer camp. Living in a toltalitarian system the energy of youth is pressed into rigid frames of proper behaviour. It leads to revolt against the system. "Revolution of Pigs" is a youth comedy, taking place in a Woodstock like milieu.
In 2004 "Revolution of Pigs" won a special jury award at the Moscow film festival. According to the jury, it is a film "that shows the past but represents the future".