Original Estonian text: Margit-Mariann Koppel http://kultuur.elu.ee/ke470_supin.htm English translation: Alan Teder Photos: Reet Sokmann

Dorian Supin’s documentary film about the composer Arvo Pärt, "24 Preludes for a Fugue", begins and ends with the Arvo Pärt composition "My Heart’s in the Highlands". This evocative phrase really does unite these two men, because both of their hearts really are in the highlands. The film "24 Preludes for a Fugue" is definitely one of the year’s best due to its extraordinary intimacy, naturalness and simplicity. This is all conveyed so easily, comfortably and lightly, that you get the feeling that the filmmaker didn’t have any other worries except deciding when to turn on the camera. Even though, in reality, the shots are edited together from different times and the material was filmed in different years. In Dorian Supin’s film "And then came the evening and then the morning", Arvo Pärt expresses the thought that music exists in the world, even without any composers, just as a sculpture is hidden inside every stone. Just as a sculptor frees the sculpture from the stone, he frees music as if he were peeling a potato, the performer places it into a pot and carries it onto the stage. But in order to do this, you have to find the place, inside this "stone", where the music is hiding. Only this will cause the listener’s ears to hear and their eyes to see.

Arvo Pärt is such a larger than life, big scale figure and yet with such a deep personality that to make a film about him is a challenge to any filmmaker. "You would have to be a very impudent director, to even want to make a film about Arvo Pärt. (Well, perhaps directors are usually that way in any case.) His figure is so huge and powerful, and yet his outward appearance is so quiet and withdrawn. This can often bring about confusion… Behind the withdrawal is a very big man with a very frail soul. And of course his music… From all of this you just can’t develop the desire to make a film," says Dorian Supin.

The first film about Arvo Pärt was made during the depths of the Brezhnev Soviet stagnation period in the year 1978. The originator and scriptwriter was Ivalo Randalu and the director was Andres Sööt. The assistant cameraman was Dorian Supin. The film had some understandable problems in being accepted during the stagnation period. Andres Sööt: "Ivalo Randalu approached me with the question, that shouldn’t we make a film about Arvo Pärt? We didn’t know then, how definite was the possibility of his emigration, but he had certainly been suppressed by the political powers and his music wasn’t performed very much. There was just something about him, which made the powers very watchful. The film’s overall theme was the preparations for the premiere performance of a work at the Estonia Concert Hall and conversations with Arvo Pärt about life and music. We couldn’t touch upon any religious themes at all, as this would have been mercilessly excised by the censors. I worked then at "Estonian Telefilm" and by censors, I mean the "Telefilm" Board of Administration, which was chaired by the ETF Head Administrator Endel Haasma. The others included were Jaan Ruus, Ülo Vinter, Enn Vetemaa, and perhaps also Tiina Mägi. It would be really interesting now if we could read the notes from that first screening, because one thing I remember very clearly. The film ends with a scene, where Arvo Pärt comes out from the door of his childhood home, and in his hands is a marionette puppet duck, which he had just bought in Italy. The trip to Italy was his first outside the country. I had been on a couple of foreign trips myself and I knew exactly the sort of feeling that stayed inside you for a while afterwards, that warmed you and brightened your life. The marionette puppet had at the top a cross of wooden sticks, with which you manipulated the doll. I had taken a large close-up shot of Arvo Pärt’s hand and this same wooden device, with which he was doing the manipulations. During the screening of the film for the Board of Administration and while watching this scene there was a sort of sorrowful-joyful cry of recognition. "Ahhaa! Pärt and his hand is on the Cross!" Endel Haasma said, "And so! Now in this scene you are trying to show that Pärt is religious! This scene is to be cut out!" The other board members were more understanding and could see what sort of stupid foolishness this was, but the scene still had to be edited out. It was a real shame, because Arvo Pärt has such beautiful, expressive, large and masculine hands.

Music, just like every creative process, comes from inside a person and naturally, it will be similar to the person, themselves. Of course, each person can make their own assumptions about what sort of person Arvo Pärt is, when they listen to his music. To me, Arvo Pärt is exactly like his music. Pure and somehow thought out quite differently. I can work out with the collaboration of all my senses, while listening to his music and understand who he is, but I do not know how to put it into words." Another possibility came about, when circumstances became more free and open. Dorian Supin: "The idea was started by Mati Põldre, who asked me, why don’t you make a film about Arvo Pärt? For me this was unexpected – at that time I was under a foreign travel ban. I thought: If this works out, it will be a huge responsibility for me. We began to make preparations for it and it did work out after all. And Pärt himself wasn’t opposed. And so came about the 1989 film "And then came the evening and then the morning." It probably helped quite a bit, that I had a decades long acquaintance with Arvo Pärt. The film’s genesis wasn’t easy though - the possibilities were very wide, I was able to film practically everywhere that I wanted. I had a good crew of people, good equipment and all the other possibilities. But the most important things have to be inside you. It is just like the stained glass artist Dolores Hofmann said to me: "There isn’t a single outward condition that will help you in the act of creativity."

When I begin to make a film, I have to know what it is that I wish to say, but that, in itself, is not enough. I must also know, in what sort of form these statements will be made. In the case of this film, I didn’t know the form, I was at loose ends. And this brought about a great fear. But now I have to say, that in the case of the Pärt films, something helps my hands to make the right movements. The film is primarily about Arvo Pärt as a composer and about his music. In making the film, what interested me the most was how he works, how he thinks and how he participates in the preparations for performances of his compositions. Partially, this sort of theme was brought about by the condition that Arvo Pärt said, that he wasn’t going to give any interviews. But it ended up quite differently."

"I’ve suffered quite a lot, when I’ve said too much," states Arvo Pärt in the 1978 film by Andres Sööt. Listening to Arvo Pärt’s music and watching the films that have been made about him, he is, to me, sincere, pure, full of the joy of discovery and the happiness of play, just like a child. But a child has a very sensitive soul, which senses very sharply all that is happening around them. All the joy and pain, the entire spectrum of passion and suffering. He lives, from our viewpoint, as if in another dimension, being above the workday narrow-mindedness, viewpoints and intrigues.

The starting point for the film "24 Preludes for a Fugue" is Arvo Pärt as a person. A fugue in its construction is somewhat similar to the life of a person. Arvo Pärt’s life can also be viewed as a fugue, of which the film shows only a few notes. For this purpose there are preludes, 24 or so. The preludes are those harmonies, which are meant to help you to understand some of the notes of the fugue. In Dorian Supin’s words, a film portrait is about the person, whom it is based on, but it is also about the filmmaker, themselves. So, to understand Arvo Pärt, it is better to listen to his music. And, to understand Dorian Supin, it is better to watch his films.

Dorian Supin: "When you are with a person, whom you respect, and who is, for you, an example to follow, this in itself already changes your life. When you are with Pärt, you sense exactly how his lifestyle is so much harder and more correct than your own. And then, when he is no longer with you, you feel, that life is much more simpler - and yet more wrong...".

Dorian Supin biographical details: Born: September 25, 1948. Education: 1971- graduated from the Leningrad Agricultural Institute with a major in plant conservation. Work: 1971-75 Tallinn Harbour agricultural inspector; Publishing - photographer. 1975 - 97 Estonian Television, "Eesti Telefilm" - Assistant cameraman, director-cinematographer, screenwriter. 1997 - Film Production Company OÜ "Twenty Four" - Owner, freelance screenwriter, cinematographer, director. 1998 - Film Studio "F-Seven" OÜ co-owner, director-cinematographer. 2000 - Concordia University Faculty of Media chair-professor. Screenwriter, cinematographer and director of more than 45 documentary films, cinematographer of 2 feature-length films.