RADIOTEHNIKA

Radiotehnika or RRR produced radios and loudspeakers sold all over the Soviet Union. The film is about the last units in this radio factory in Riga. It is also a film about a woman engineer who was working there years ago. She tells about that time, the Soviet Time and its social organisation with the factory. I was intrigued by her career and how as a woman she chose to study engineering. "Radiotehnika" reflects on the imagery of Soviet times, the well known imagery of Soviet factory, the social privileges that this environment granting those its workers.

RADIOTEHNIKA

trailer
view the film

b&w, 19 min., HD, 16:9 Riga, 2011 

sound by PHONIC PSYCHOMIMESIS 

camera and editing: Eléonore de Montesquiou 

with GALINA TRAUMANE, AUSMA SMILTNIECE and MIKHAIL BOGDANOV

original language: Russian with English subtitles

translation and reviewing: Anastasija Petrova, Mara Traumane, Brent Klinkum, Nina Kuzmina, Agnese Luse

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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. Eléonore de Montesquiou’s film Radio Engineering (Radiotehnika), produced by the Festival Survival Kit 3, was included in the programme of the prestigious International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Alongside Cannes, Berlin, Locarno and Venice Film Festivals IFFR is one of the biggest European film events and in January and February 2012 it will take place for the 41st time.

Radio Engineering is an analytical video story about the Riga Radio Factory – once a model Soviet factory that provided its workers not only with social benefits, but also a powerful propaganda bastion. Eléonore de Montesquiou’s (France, Estonia, Germany) film was created in close cooperation with Agnese Lūse, Māra and Gaļina Traumane, Rihards Bražinskis and Ineta Sipunova. The film premiered at the festival Survival Kit 3 organised by the Contemporary Art Centre (LMC) in Riga in September 2011.

Eléonore de Montesquiou was born in Paris and is now living in Berlin and Tallinn, mostly working with a documentary approach and her work mostly focuses on integration, immigration and history reviewing in the former Soviet Union, especially in Estonia." Riga 2014