Estonian filmmaker Jaak Kilmi (REVOLUTION OF PIGS, part of AFI's 2006 EU Film Showcase) examines the most important factor in how the Communists lost the Cold War: the West's one-two punch of disco music and Dallas episodes. Western pop culture, banned in countries like Estonia but easily picked up from Finnish broadcasts with the help of homemade antennas, played a major role in winning the hearts and minds of the then-Soviet citizenry for democracy, in textbook "soft power" fashion. Blending wonderful archival footage, academic interviews and deliriously funny recreations (the best being Kilmi's rural cousin Urve reading his letters full of DALLAS updates to a rapt village audience) Kilmi's eye-opening and entertaining documentary hits just the right tone between the serious and the surreal.

DIR/SCR Jaak Kilmi; SCR/PROD Kiur Aarma. Estonia/Finland, 2009, color and b&w, 80 min. In English, Estonian, Finnish and Russian with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Sunday, November 8, 9:45; Tuesday, November 10, 9:00

AFI Member passes will be accepted.

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