A film directed by an entire country

That filmmaking is a collective art is out of question, but how collective can it possibly get? Can a film be written, directed and produced by  an entire country? According to filmmaker Mikk Rand, the answer is yes. He is the creator of Filmitalgud, a film project that is gathering together people from all over Estonia to write, direct and produce a single feature film. With a background in documentary and animation, Rand is also the founder of Kinobuss, an organization that aims to educate communities in media literacy. He has been travelling on his bus since 2001, to promote and make local and alternative world films available to communities in Estonia and Eastern Europe. Vita Europe meets him to talk about his new project.

Where did you get the idea for Filmitalgud?

It seemed very logical. For the past ten years we’ve been travelling around Estonia with our organization, Kinobuss, to promote cinema in small communities, but we felt like it was not enough. Filmitalgud is a way to teach people the filmmaking process, so that, while working together, they become more aware of how the film language works. This year Tallin is the cultural capital of Europe and the city administration agreed to co-finance the project, together with the Ministry of culture and the Ministry of education.

How does the project work?

We started to work on the project in September 2010, looking for volunteers who wanted to take part in it. People started to go on the Filmitalgud website and give ideas for the film plot. Many people gave their contribution to the first draft of the story, then we organized a workshop with professional screenwriters and we invited 20 people who had been particularly active in the development of the first draft. A professional screenplay came out of the workshop and now we’re looking for directors, cameramen, production assistants, costumes designers and of course the actors. Last weekend we had the casting for the main actors and 800 people registered on the website to play the part.

How many directors are you planning to involve in the project?

There will probably be between 20 and 30 non professional directors. The shooting will start in August and it will last one month. We’re going to travel across the country holding filmmaking workshops until August, so that when the time comes, everybody’s ready . On set there will also be professional directors who will lead the process, it will be a mix of directing and teaching.

Why did you decide to develop this particular project?

Filmitalgud is not about making a really good movie, because we don’t know exactly what will come out of it, we can say that it’s a big experiment. The purpose is to educate people to film language and to make them media literate. The most important  thing is the process, we want people to go beyond the glamorous side of cinema and to understand what filmmaking really is.