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 -Ekaterina Moskalenko

Ekaterina Moskalenko
when I asked her why the workers were not protesting since they were losing their jobs and the factory was collapsing, Ekaterina answered that:

"We used to have seven factories, seven! Now we will be left with only one, and everyone lucky enough to keep their job at Kreenholm will be working there. It is really very sad.

The meetings were about other things, collective agreements; the municipality increased the water rates. Our management decided to close down production after that because… well, just because!


There were practically no protests at all. People used to go on strike before, after Perestroika, when they privatized, when the Swedes bought Kreenholm and wanted to establish rules that were not really satisfactory for the workers. People wanted to go on strike back then, and our trade union leader even started a hunger strike. It was our way of protesting. That was long ago! Today people have become resigned to their fate.

Why is that?

Because it is… well, pretty much senseless; because the owners don’t need production on such a large scale; because would only make a loss… they suffer losses…

Yesterday and today people signed their discharge notices, and in three months they will lose their jobs and leave Kreenholm. They all met very calmly. There were no tears and everyone is taking it easy, because even though it is hard, everyone saw it coming. There is no hope left."
Ekaterina Moskalenko is editor of Kreenholm Gazette, Narva

VABRIK - Dora Grafova-

Dora Grafova
They were ordinary workers.
My husband’s father, my husband – they were ordinary workers.
His father was an ordinary worker.
And my husband’s grandfather was a tin man, he was an ordinary worker too.
My husband’s father and mother worked in Kreenholm.

They were Russian, but my husband’s mother was Estonian.
The grandfather began working in 1896 and he stopped working in 1952.
It has already been 32 years that my son Grafov has been working in Kreenholm.
Sasha, my grandson, also works at Kreenholm.

During the war they were evacuated to Russia, they did not stay here.
When the war was over in 1944, or in 1945, they came back to Narva. When they arrived at the station there was an overwhelming silence. After the liberation of Narva/When Narva was liberated, there was only one old woman alive.
Almost all of Kreenholm was in ruins.
Even the machines had to be cut; they had melted due to high temperatures.
The old weaving factory had suffered the least and it was slowly being repaired.
The hydraulic turbines that rotated by water pressure were in a better state, they were repaired, and they resumed producing electricity.
There was a waterfall nearby - Narva is famous for its waterfall – The water falls from a height of 5 or 9 meters.

Little by little Narva came back to life. Former residents began returning to the city.
After the war, when Kreenholm was restored, there were 12 000 workers.
Today, there are 3 000 workers and at the end of May [2008] a thousand will be dismissed.
This is all written in the newspapers.

Vassia, my son, will also lose his job and Sasha will take his paternity leave.
Vassia has already been offered three or four new jobs. He doesn't drink, he would never shirk work, he is responsible!

How we all feel about it?
My brother’s daughter-in-law always says: “Kreenholm was my breadwinner”
And everybody thinks the same.
And now our breadwinner will be closed.