Disco and Atomic War

In the 1970s, the residents of Tallinn was glued to their TV screens to watch the racy adventures of \i Emmanuelle\i0 -- a true feat, if you consider that Estonian television was under the strict control of the KGB. The magic word was Finnish TV, which freely broadcast Western shows just across the Gulf of Finland. The American-built broadcasting tower on the coast near Helsinki ensured that northern Estonia could also receive the signal. In \i Disco & Atomic War\i0 , director Jaak Kilmi uses colorful archive footage to recall his warm memories of Friday nights when he tuned in to \i Dallas\i0 to follow the latest clashes between J.R. and Sue Ellen. Kilmi's father was an electronic engineer who built illegal Finnish TV converters. Without knowing it, his son Jaak had ended up on the frontline of an ideological media war. For his film on collective memory, history as a whole, and the smaller stories behind it, Kilmi made use of countless TV series, movies, commercials, and news broadcasts, and he also dramatized many of his reminiscences. Interviews with the erstwhile heads of Finnish and Estonian TV and Edward Lucas, author of \i The New Cold War\i0 , provide the historical perspective.