This was Jaak Sova’s advice to enable me to navigate Paljassaare tee 17 in Põhja-Tallinn, or North Tallinn, a site 57,000 square metres in size, once woven into the fabric of Tallinn’s transport infrastructure. The site currently houses an assemblage of businesses primarily dealing with scrap, sorting the waste of the city into that which could be of value and finding means of disposal for that which it cannot. The largest structure there, situated centrally on the site in a building reminiscent of a Soviet past, is the Tallinn Prophouse, a business that supplies props for film, television and media productions, of which Jaak is one of the owners.


The Prophouse was established in 2019 and after operating in Kalamaja and Suur-Sõjamäe, moved to Paljassaare tee 17 in 2020. Prior to this, the building was simultaneously used by a patchwork of businesses – a second-hand outlet, a restorer, a custom woodworker, and the film and television production company Nafta Films – all of whom progressively moved out as the Prophouse increased in size and scope, through a series of negotiations between the Prophouse, the businesses and the city-owned Tallinna Tööstuspargid who operate the site. By the summer of 2021, the Prophouse had become the sole occupant of the building.²


The Prophouse carries a large range of objects from various times and places to cater to the needs of a range of film, television and other media productions shooting in and around Tallinn. In one sense, their aim is to be a phone call away from supplying the tools for the expression of a range of imaginations simultaneously operating within the media landscape, to contribute to the believability of stories that are aiming to be told on screen. For this, the Prophouse must be well-stocked and ever-ready, and, as a result, the building is filled from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling with, seemingly, every object imaginable: furniture, clocks of various eras, knick-knacks, obsolete technology, pre-loved toys, lamps of every shade, hefty prison shelves, a golf course quantity of synthetic grass… you name it. To move around inside the Prophouse, one is required to navigate narrow corridors formed by piles of objects and in doing so, one feels they may have been teleported inside the mind of an antiquarian in the midst of a migraine.


Jaak, art director and one of the partners of the Prophouse, teeters between being an individual who operates a flourishing business, a passionate film practitioner, an avid collector and someone on the brink of a hoarding problem. In fact, Jaak refers to himself as Jäätmejaak, a spin on the word jäätmejaam, which roughly translates to ‘waste sorting station’. At times, Jaak gleans useful items from the scrap dealers that surround the Prophouse, at other times he uses the scrap dealers to rid of excess items and make more room inside the premises. Sometimes, ephemeral characters approach Jaak, trying their luck at selling their wares – or their waste – at the Prophouse en route to the scrap dealers; their actual intended destination. Jaak and the scrap dealers are all familiar with each other. Though the scrap dealers think of and refer to Jaak as a кинохудожник or a film-artist, there are overlaps not only in the physical site they all inhabit, but often also in the outlook and practices of Jaak and the scrap dealers.


Despite their overlaps, the Prophouse may be the only existing business on the site that will remain there as, in the coming years, the site is slated to transition into the Tallinn Film Wonderland, a film studio complex to serve the Baltics and beyond. The Tallinn Film Wonderland is a company established by a number of film production houses – Allfilm, Filmivabrik, Kinosaurus, Nafta Films, Stellar, Taska Productions and Film Industry Cluster composed of 17 Estonian production companies.³ For a few years, discussions took place with a private developer about establishing the Wonderland at a site near the Arsenal in Kopli. This fell through, however, when the developer decided it would be lucrative to make a residential complex of the site. From there, the focus then shifted to Paljassaare tee 17.


The site is proposed to be developed in three phases, starting from the south and moving to the north. In the first phase, three sound stages and additional production buildings are proposed, with the largest of the sound stages intended to be 1200 square metres and 14 metres high. In the later phases, the area is to include residential and commercial buildings.⁴ The Tallinn Film Wonderland echoes a current generation of speculative development across Paljassaare, such as the residential complexes Ecobay and Wolfscape and a casino on a series of artificial islands envisioned just off the east coast of the peninsula.⁵


Flicking through articles about the Film Wonderland published in the press, one comes across phrases such as “seizing the opportunity”⁶ and “Hollywood is welcome”,⁷ as well as discussions of approximately €13.5 million required to develop the project (which would have to be paid back to both city and national governments over 16 years).⁸ Imagining the films produced out of the speculative studios amongst such news produces a woozy melange of slow-motion cinematic spectacle. After this scene concludes, however, one begins to wonder what films may have been produced in and around the same site in the past.


In the back of an early chauffeur-driven car stands a bearded man in a heavy coat and a hat. Another man, crouched on the street below the car, appears to be gathering his possessions scattered before him as the car begins to drive away. A few frames of this unknown film exist hidden within Paljassaare’s first appearance on celluloid⁹ of Emperor Nikolai II laying the foundation stone for the Peter the Great military harbour in 1912, shot two months after another film which is often celebrated as the birth of Estonian cinema. This film is one of 14 results that emerge from searching for ‘Paljassaare’ in the Estonian National Film Archive, three in audio and 11 in film or video.


In the midst of trawling through the archive and other such material remnants with the present and possible futures in mind, a game emerges. What has changed and what is the same when one compares a site, a keyword and a search result? In the midst of rapid, incessant, and, sometimes senseless change, what one seeks to find in the archive is, perhaps, meaning cultivated from a sense of continuity.


Continuity, in the world of filmmaking, is a system “to maintain continuous and clear narrative action”,¹⁰ the basic purpose of which “is to allow space, time, and action to continue in a smooth flow over a series of shots”.¹¹ Continuity is the system that, when one watches (the vast majority of) narrative films, enables sense to be made, be it through the integrity of look and position of objects, or logical movement of characters through a space, or in the course of meaningful conversation between characters.


“Привет.”¹²


A bright yellow van missing a wheel. Three flowerless flowerpots, dancing in the wind. SLIME, in white ink on red rusted iron. A pile of light-grey Kruschev-era bricks.


Apart from their evanescence, I’m unsure these images justify this much time outside in such temperatures...


“Привет!”


I can no longer pretend I didn’t hear him. I walk towards him, carrying the camera and tripod I’m holding. He asks me a question. Pointing at the Prophouse, hoping I remember it correctly, I say the only word I know:


“Кинохудожник.”


I wonder if this word will serve as a satisfactory response in such a situation, or what this word might mean in this site’s future self. I then wonder how long such situations will continue to transpire as the Film Wonderland steps further towards realisation and the scrap dealers further towards the cutting room floor.


“Кинохудожник,” he repeats.


Disappearing between two piles of scrap, he walks away.






By Kush Badhwar



<sup>Acknowledgements

Jaak Sova for generous sharing of time, ideas and resources through the research and making process. Gerli Toomet from the Estonian National Film Archives for archival guidance, support and provision of material. MUR21, Andra Aaloe and Keiti Kljavin for considered feedback throughout the studio.


References

1. Jaak Sova, conversation with the author, 26 November 2021. The transliteration of кинохудожник is kinoudojnik and translates to ‘film-artist’.

2. Jaak Sova, interview with the author, 1 December 2021.

3. Tallinn Film Wonderland, Tallinn Film Wonderland introduction, accessed 27 December 2021.

4. Michael Rosser, Tallinn Film Wonderland studios to open in 2022, Screen Daily, 26 November 2019.

5. Juhan Tere, Tallinn initiates to build artificial islands in the sea near Paljassaare peninsula, The Baltic Course, 3 November 2009.

6. Michael Rosser, Tallinn Film Wonderland studios to open in 2022, Screen Daily, 26 November 2019.

7. Plamen Petrov, Tallinn’s upcoming film complex added to list of cultural objects of national importance, The Mayor, 18 September 2021.

8. Helen Wright (ed.), Tallinn's Film City to receive building permit but future funding unclear, ERR, 20 July 2021.

9. Vene keiser Nikolai II asetab kai-põhjakivi Peeter Suure sõjasadama ehitusel Paljassaarel Tallinnas 29.06.1912., Filmiarhiivi Infosüsteem, accessed 26 December 2021.

10. Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, McGraw-Hill, 2008, page 477.

11. Ibid, page 231.

12. Unknown individual, exchange with the author, 13 December 2021.</sup>