The Women in the Picture

The artist Lauri Sillak, aka Laurentsius, starts painting for his new exhibition in an unusual place – a vacant wooden house in the heart of Tallinn, in a house that has belonged to the creator of the art of film and photography in Estonia, Johannes Parikas and his wife Lilli. The Parikas name truly set the fashion in the interwar Republic of Estonia. Several movie theatres in Tallinn, the Estonia Films film studio, a famous photography studio in Tallinn’s Old Town, the first Miss Estonia competition, portraits of prominent statesmen, and the photographing of all of Estonia were all connected to that name. The walls of the mysterious dwelling of the Parikas family conceal within themselves the traces of people who in their day were prominent in society, and the life of those times is uncovered from beneath the accumulated cultural layers. The portraits of contemporary beauties and fashion icons appear on the wallpapers of that time, but the ghost of Lilli, the mistress of the house, is restless. She has a story that has not been told yet.

Award, EstDocs - Estonian Documentary Film Festival (Toronto, Canada), 2017, Special Prize