FOR EXAMPLE, FABRIKA

 FOR EXAMPLE, FABRIKA was initiated in Narva, Estonia, 2009, continued in Moscow in 2010 and then in Riga in 2011.

directed by Eleonore de Montesquiou,
- Proektfabrika, Moscow, january 2010 with the support of Asya Filippova, in collaboration with Maksim Spivakov, Romana Schmalisch, Robert Schlicht, Olga Jürgenson
- Centre d'art Passerelle, Brest, with the support of Ulrike Kremeier, in collaboration with Romana Schmalisch, in november 2010

FOR EXAMPLE, FABRIKA
- films in Kreenholm textile manufacture, Narva. The manufacture closed in 2010
- films in Oktiabr Fabrika, Moscow (now Fabrika: http://www.fabrikacci.ru/)
- newspaper made with Proektfabrika, Moscow with with Maksim Spivakov, Romana Schmalisch
- films and newspaper in Riga, about Radiotehnika, a radio factory that closed down in 2012

VABRIK - KREENHOLM - the film

VABRIK 

30 min.
b&w
language: Russian with English or Estonian sT

images:
Eléonore de MontesquiouNarva Museum photo and film archive

music and sound: Marcel Türkowsky

view the film

Vabrik is a film about a textile manufacture, it is also a film about the images that we have of this manufacture.

In February 2008, a worker showed me around the Kreenholm textile factory. It was a one-day opportunity to film inside a factory which is gradually closing down and this employee, an electrician who has been working there for forty years, would soon lose his job. Inside the factory, I filmed the last days of the spinning and weaving machines.
I returned one year later, in 2009, to find that the buildings I visited previously had all closed down. However, I was permitted to film the last production units operated by a few hundred workers: bleaching, printing and sewing fabrics imported from Turkey, India and Pakistan.
My film tells the story of this textile factory at the border of Estonia and Russia through the memories of an elderly woman, Dora. She recalls how her family’s story is intertwined with that of the fabric, and of the generations that have worked there. Kreenholm was a unique example of 19th century industrial organisation..
The last decades of its life as a factory reflect the current development of the textile industry from technocracy to brand-building and marketing. Delocalization, restructuring and globalization are all well-known today and in this region they have induced an economic disaster -- specifically for the cities of Narva and Ivangorod.

The film alternates between images of Kreenholm today and from historical photographic and film archives.

VABRIK - the last units-

Summer 2009:

 
I returned inside the manufacture to find that the buildings I visited previously had all closed down. However, I was permitted to film the last production units operated by a few hundred workers: bleaching, printing and sewing fabrics imported from Turkey, India and Pakistan.

Oleg Klushin - Олег Клушин

OLEG KLUSHIN

30 min.
2009
b&w
Russian with Engl. or Estonian sT


A talk with Oleg Klushin who was director of Kreenholm manufacture in the 1980s.
with the participation of Ekaterina Moskalenko.
Oleg Klushin explains how the slow decline of Kreenholm reflects a change in the philosophy of textile production as well as a change in leadership, from technocracy to brandmaking."

Kreenholm workers - Narva Museum Archive

 

               

RADIOTEHNIKA - the film

RADIOTEHNIKA

Director: ELEONORE DE MONTESQUIOU

Sound: PHONIC PSYCHOMIMESIS

Participants: GALINA TRAUMANE, AUSMA SMILTNIECE and MIKHAIL BOGDANOV

black and white
length: 18 min

Language: Russian with English subtitles

Translation and reviewing

Brent Klinkum, Nina Kuzmina, Agnese Luse,

Anastasija Petrova, Mara Traumane

Special thanks to 

Gaļina Traumane, Mara Traumane 

Agnese Luse, Rihards Brazinskis and Raitis Upens 

The film is supported by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art within the frame of SURVIVAL KIT 3 festival.

in Radiotehnika, Riga, 2011

text excerpt:

It was 1991 and already our salaries weren’t being paid.

I was still working at the factory, where everything was in the process of collapsing. Naturally, the big bosses grabbed all they could, but ordinary employees were just waiting in vain for their little salaries.

RADIOTEHNIKA - the newspaper

graphic designer: Ineta Sipunova

photographies : Eléonore de Montesquiou, Mara Traumane, Galina Traumane, Agnese Luse

texts: Russian with English, Latvian and French translations

black and white

production : LCCA, , Transat Video Caen and Centre Culturel Français de Riga

32 pages

42 x 30 cm

2011, Lettonie

The film "Radiotehnika" and the newspaper allow me to reflect on the imagery of Soviet times, the well known imagery of Soviet factory and the social privileges that this environment granting those its workers. It is important here to remember the nostalgia and the instability that those who lost their jobs and their privileges feel today and to remember that factory newspapers were propaganda tools monitored and censored by the Communist Party.

All of this work is a close collaboration with Agnese Luse, Mara and Galina Traumane, Ineta Sipunova,  Rihards Brazinskis and Raitis Upens.