The Singing Revolution
| The Singing Revolution | |
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| Directed by | James Tusty Maureen Castle Tusty |
| Produced by | Bestor Cram Artur Talvik Piret Tibbo-Hudgins |
| Written by | Maureen Castle Tusty James Tusty Mike Majoros |
| Narrated by | Linda Hunt |
| Music by | John Kusiak |
| Cinematography | Miguelangel Aponte-Rios |
| Edited by | Mike Majoros |
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| Distributed by | Abramorama |
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94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $327,420 (USA) |
The Singing Revolution is a documentary film created by James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty about the nonviolent Singing Revolution in Estonia in which hundreds of thousands of Estonians gathered publicly between 1986 and 1991, in an effort to end decades of Soviet occupation. The revolutionary songs they created anchored Estonia’s non-violent struggle for freedom.
Drawn by James' Estonian heritage, filmmakers James and Maureen Tusty traveled to Estonia in 1999 to teach filmmaking courses. During their stay, they became increasingly interested in the stories they heard about the Estonian Singing Revolution; they found the story of how Estonia was able to break free from one of the most oppressive regimes the world has ever known by way of nonviolent resistance alone, to be "one of the most amazing stories" they had ever heard, and were astounded by the fact that "virtually no one outside the Baltics" knew of it. Film Critic Jessica Reaves says that in terms of the film's sheer entertainment value, that for the viewer, this general "lack of familiarity with Estonia's recent history actually works in the film's favor", in that "suspense born of ignorance lends the unfolding drama the urgency of a political thriller."
Caught in the middle between two aggressively expansionist superpowers, Nazi Germany and the USSR, and pledged to the Soviet Union by the secret clauses in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Nazis and the Soviets, Russian forces invaded and "annexed" the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1939, at the beginning of World War II. As was the case in Latvia and Lithuania, by the end of the war more than a quarter of the Estonian population had been deported, executed, or had fled the country. During the turbulent decades that followed, music became a powerful unifying force in the Baltic republics - a means of preserving the country’s national identity, as well as a tool for political resistance in the face of cultural genocide.
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