Lennart Meri Trailers
Those Who Dare TrailerThe Singing Revolution TrailerSon of Torum Trailer
Lennart Georg Meri (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈlenˑɑrt ˈgeorg ˈmeri]; March 29, 1929 – March 14, 2006) was an Estonian politician, writer, and film director. He served as the second president of Estonia from 1992 to 2001. Meri was among the leaders of the movement to restore Estonian independence from the Soviet Union.
Meri was born in Tallinn, a son of the Estonian diplomat and later Shakespeare translator Georg Meri, and Estonian Swedish mother Alice-Brigitta Engmann. With his family, Lennart left Estonia at an early age and studied abroad, in nine different schools and in four different languages. His warmest memories were from his school years in Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. In addition to his native Estonian, Lennart Meri fluently spoke five other languages: Finnish, French, German, English and Russian.
Lennart Meri and his family were in Tallinn when Estonia became occupied by the Soviet Union armed forces in June 1940. The extended Meri family was split in the middle, half of whom opposed, the other half who supported the Soviet Union. Lennart's cousin Arnold Meri joined the Red Army and was soon made a Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1941, the Meri family was deported to Siberia along with thousands of other Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians sharing the same fate. Heads of the family were separated from their families and shut into concentration camps where only a few survived. At the age of twelve, Lennart Meri worked as a lumberman in Siberia. He also worked as a potato peeler and a rafter to support his family.
Whilst in exile, Lennart Meri grew interested in the other Uralic languages that he heard around him, the language family of which his native Estonian is also a part. His interest in the ethnic and cultural kinship amongst the scattered Uralic family had been a lifelong theme within his work.
The Meri family survived and found their way back to Estonia where Lennart Meri graduated cum laude from the Faculty of History and Languages of the University of Tartu in 1953. On 5 March 1953, the day of Joseph Stalin's death, he proposed to his first wife Regina Meri, saying "Let us remember this happy day forever." The politics of the Soviet Union did not allow him to work as a historian, so Meri found work as a dramatist in the Vanemuine, the oldest theatre of Estonia, and later on as a producer of radio plays in the Estonian broadcasting industry. Several of his films were released and have since gained great critical acclaim.
Most Popular Lennart Meri Trailers
Total trailers found: 14
01 December 2006
Most people don't think about singing when they think about revolutions. But song was the weapon of choice when, between 1986 and 1991, Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation.
23 March 1970
A medieval love story with lots of adventures. The times are troubled - there's a revolt of peasants going on.
10 July 1967
Martin Puri is an elderly fisherman who is told to retire because of his old age. When a group of people has to be saved from a boat in an autumn storm, Martin understands that one cannot act against the sea but together with it.
14 November 1970
The story of Balthasar Russow, an Estonian pastor from the 16th century, his life and life's work - writing The Chronicle of Livonia.
01 April 2015
When Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power in 1985, his reform policy sparked an independence movement in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
04 February 1978
Sequel to the "The Waterfowl People". The author interprets the kinship, linguistic and cultural relationships of the Finno-Ugric peoples.
17 November 1969
There are three children growing at Tammaru farm - one boy, Margus; and two orphan girls, Mari and Tiina.
29 May 1967
The events take place in Estonia in a summer in the 1960s. The Boy and the Girl want to go from mainland Estonia to the island of Saaremaa, but they do not have any money to buy the ticket to the ferry.
01 January 1966
Pikk Street is one of the most important thoroughfares of Tallinn’s Old Town. The picture playfully combines hidden camera footage with more observational images, employing shots from unusual angles; these are accompanied by specific sounds and interesting musical themes.
05 February 1989
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.
01 January 1970
A documentary about the histoy and linguistic ties of the Finno-Ugric, and Samoyedic peoples. Speakers of the Kamassian, Nenets, Khanty, Komi, Mari, and Karelian languages were filmed in their everyday settings in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
19 March 1986
A three-act film-essay about memory and the historical-cultural ties of the Finno- Ugric peoples. The first chapter is dedicated to ancient Bearese of memory, such as Karelian cliff drawings, Kalevala runo song and Khanty bear feast rituals.
01 May 1991
Livonians are among the smallest Finno-Ugric nations still existing today. They are the closest kindred people to Estonians and Livonian language is the closest one to Estonian language.
05 February 1997
"Shaman" was filmed on July the 16th, 1977 in the northernmost corner of Eurasia, on the Taymyr Peninsula, at the Avam river, concurrently with the shooting of the documentary "The Winds of the Milky Way".
