Disco and the Atomic War2009

Against an inventive canvas of archival footage, cleverly staged scenes and interviews with former Cold Warriors who still speak in the dated jargon of the era, Estonian compatriots reminisce about growing up during the duck-and-cover days behind the Iron Curtain. As it turns out, “mutually assured destruction” was nothing compared to the threat of “pop music, jeans and sex.” Tallinn, the capital of Soviet Estonia and a mere eighty kilometers from “free” Helsinki, was a front in the battle for soft power between the Soviet Union and the United States; its weaponry ever more powerful antennae, rocket-born satellites and CIA-funded programming. Director Jaak Kilmi and friends recall, in spy-toned voiceovers, smuggling “Finnish boxes” in order to keep up with episodes of DALLAS and drilling a peephole through a summer-camp wall to catch a glimpse of the insatiable EMMANUELLE. One man converts a household thermometer into a mercury antenna to capture forbidden broadcasts and inadvertently jams signals to a nearby missile silo. The lengths these pop culture-deprived Estonians went to for a little salacious entertainment are as hilarious as the deadpan delivery of their stories. - Shari Kizirian