Reel life: Memory and Gender in Soviet Estonian home movies and amateur films : a case study of the Estonian TV Series 8 MM LIFE (2014–2015)

Abstract

There is a global boom in personal accounts, autobiographies, and memoirs telling the stories of real individuals and their experiences. It is therefore unsurprising that autobiographies and other forms of personal documents would become an important source for rethinking history in former Soviet and socialist states as well. The autobiographical accounts were used to rethink the national past and oppose official Soviet historiography. Recently, documentary films and TV series make use of footage from people’s home archives, and thus claim to be truthful depictions of the past.