Madness
Directed by Kaljo Kiisk • 1969 • USSR/Estonia
Hailed as Estonia’s first truly modern feature film, Kaljo Kiisk’s mind-bending satire of authoritarianism and self-delusion pushed the boundaries of Soviet propriety and was banned from theatres for nearly twenty years. In an unnamed, occupied country at the end of the Second World War, the Gestapo are planning on exterminating the residents of a remote asylum. But there’s a catch: reports suggest British agents are hiding among the patients. Officer Windisch (legendary Estonian actor Jüri Järvet) must go undercover to root out the imposters – soon putting his own sense of sanity and faith in the fascist cause on the line.
MADNESS • HULLUMEELSUS
Directed by Kaljo Kiisk
Written by Viktors Lorencs
Cinematography by Anatoly Zabolotsky and Andrei Dobrovolsky
Music by Lembit Veevo
Starring: Jüri Järvet, Vaclovas Blēdis, Valery Nosik
In Estonian with English subtitles
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Madness
Directed by Kaljo Kiisk • 1969 • USSR/Estonia
Hailed as Estonia’s first truly modern feature film, Kaljo Kiisk’s mind-bending satire of authoritarianism and self-delusion pushed the boundaries of Soviet propriety and was banned from theatres for nearly twenty years. In an unnamed, occupied count...
Extras
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Video Essay: Before Backrooms, there was this Soviet film
Kane Parsons’s Backrooms became A24’s biggest opening ever by turning fluorescent corridors and drop ceilings into pure dread. But decades earlier, Estonian director Kaljo Kiisk had already built a sterile institutional non-place of his own: an asylum in a nameless country, occupied by the Nazis,...
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Video Essay: The Shakespearean face of Soviet Sci-Fi
From Shakespeare to Solaris: Estonia’s Jüri Järvet burst onto the international scene in the 1970s with a series of performances of unusual intensity. From the title role in Grigorii Kozintsev’s daring vision of King Lear, to some of the biggest cult titles in Baltic film history, and Andrei Tark...
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766 KBNotes on Madness
766 KB
