Cēsis to host partnership day of Estonian literary festival Prima Vista
International literary festival Prima Vista, held yearly in Tartu, presented its main programme „Small World“ of 2021 already in late September. However, COVID restrictions have postponed its partner city event which will now take place in Cēsis on 4 December. For the whole of this Saturday, poets, musicians and translators from Latvia and Estonia will come together for a series of performances. „Each year, Prima Vista has had a partner city from elsewhere in Estonia but while Tartu was running for European Capital of Culture, we started thinking of moving into neighbouring countries,“ the event’s Estonian promoter Berk Vaher explains. „With Didzis Staris, a cultural activist in Cēsis, we had plans for the partner event already in 2019 but the 2020 Prima Vista had to skip its partner city event due to COVID-19 and it has also been delayed several times this year. Now, at last, we’re ready to make it happen.“
Latvian authors performing will include Madara Gruntmane, Dana Zālīte, Oskars Orlovs (Raibīs), Jayde Will, Jānis Rokpelnis, Arturs Punte, Krišjānis Zeļģis and Ligija Purinaša as well as sound design by Maksims Šenteļevs and Rostislavs Rekuta. Estonian delegation will feature poets Øyvind Rangøy (also patron of Prima Vista 2021), Contra, Kristiina Ehin, Lauri Sommer, Carolina Pihelgas and Piret Põldver, with sound design by Kiwa, Paul Lepasson and John Grzinich and the evening show by poetry band Naelravi and DJ Ahto Külvet (Psühhoteek). The partnership day will take place in arts centres PLMC (2pm-19.30) and Mala (8-11pm) and also transmitted live through the Kirjandusfestival Prima Vista Youtube channel. Attendance on location only with COVID certificates.
PROGRAMME
PLMC
14.00-14.10 Opening words
14.10-14.30 Øyvind Rangøy
14.30-14.50 Contra & Madara Gruntmane
14.50-15.10 Dana Zālīte
15.10-15.30 Break
15.30-15.50 John Grzinich & Oskars Orlovs (Raibīs)
15.50-16.10 Piret Põldver & Paul Lepasson
16.10-16.30 Jayde Will/Maksims Šenteļevs/ Rostislavs Rekuta/ Ligija Purinaša
16.30-16.50 Jānis Rokpelnis
16.50-18.00 Break
18.00-18.20 Carolina Pihelgas & Kiwa
18.20-18.40 Arturs Punte & Krišjānis Zeļģis
18.40-19.00 Lauri Sommer
19.00-19.30 Kristiina Ehin (+ Daila Ozola, Guntars Godinš, Lauri Sommer)
19.30-20.00 Break
MALA
20.00-20.40 Naelravi
20.40-21.00 Break
21.00-23.00 DJ Ahto Külvet (Psühhoteek)
Publisher Zoltán Pap
This year ‘Small World’ is the main theme of Prima Vista. What does this phrase mean to you?
In the 1980s I had to spend my childhood in the last decade of the Socialism. My small world was half a continent behind the Iron Curtain. Then in the 1990s the world opened up and the small world turned into a big world, we could travel freely, we could get a world passport, there was no financial limit to buy US Dollars, Italian Liras or German Marks, the world became different. It looked big but conquestable.
After the university and a year of working in Africa, I started my ’adult life’ at one of Hungary’s leading literary publishers, and I increasingly felt that the world was shrinking again, becoming a small world, so I set out in 2009 and moved to England with my family, to chase the big world again. I worked for a smaller UK publisher for 5 years. What a coincidence! The company’s name was ‘small world creations’, strictly with small initials.
By then, smartphones came, the net started to rule our lives, and the vast world began to narrow and transformed into a small world. Not only a part of it, but the whole planet began to look smaller and smaller. Today, thanks to technical progress, the people’s desire for freedom and the opportunities, I can travel to Estonia from Hungary almost as easily as if I were only traveling from one city to another. As a child, we just looked at the planes (mainly Soviet military aircrafts) at the Budapest Airport and dreamed with my brothers that one day we would fly. Definitely, it’s not a small world we live in, but even if it feels small, we still have to trust that one day we’ll have a chance to see something else, other parts of the bigger world.
For my kids, maybe Europe will mean the small world, the place where they feel at home, and the Solar System will be the big world, we don’t know yet, but still, we’ve come a long way since the 1980s, not just in time, but also on the highway of development.
Zoltán Pap
Publisher at Libri Publishing Group, literary agent of Vilmos Kondor at Sárközy & Co. Literary Agency, Hungary
Poetry film “Sentimental Education “
An international collaboration between Estonia, Ireland and the UK, Sentimental Education is a four part poetry film featuring the work of 14 established and emerging poets.
Inspired by the work of prize winning Estonian poet, Tõnis Vilu the collective consider connection, mental health and community in this collection of poetry-performance-films tracing deeply personal lines between each artist. Mentored by legendary poet, Joelle Taylor, award-winning poet and theatre maker, Adam Kammerling and Estonian poetry slam leader, Sirel Heinloo, Sentimental Education is a film series unique to the past year, at once defined by the pandemic in form, and equally refusing to be contained by it. With video artist Einar Lints threading the works together, Sentimental Education is a unique and varied poetic experiment that combines bilingual voices never before heard together, transcending borders both physical and sentimental.
The poetry film will be presented at Prima Vista and the Liverpool Literary Festival, WoWfest. All films are translated with subtitles.
Facebook event on May 7, 2021 at 6 pm: Poetry film “Sentimental Education “.
Prima Vista Festival will this year take place in September
Literary festival Prima Vista, traditionally taking place in the first week of May, will this year, due to the Covid19 situation, be put off to September. Events and encounters linking with the theme of the festival ‘Small World’ will this year take place from the 20th to the 25th September.
‘This year, September will be the best time for the festival as hopefully it is then that we shall be full of hope and energy to apply the freedom of activity that Covid19 has dried up,’ Krista Aru, the chairwoman of the Prima Vista board said. ‘It is important for us that Prima Vista festival would allow human contact between the author and the public, the new book and the reader, that encounters between different worlds would wake sincere emotion. In May it would only be possible to participate in virtual encounters and events but these would not be our habitual multi-layered literary party full of many opportunities.’
In autumn, Tartu will entertain Etgar Keret, an author from Israel, Uwe Laub from Germany, Victor Shenderovitch from Russia, Norwegian authors Klara Hveberg and Knut Ødegård, Turid Farbregd, an estophil and translator of many Estonian authors, and Rvins Varde from Latvia. This year, the festival patron is Øyvind Rangøy, translator and poet of Norwegian origin. The programme will include a futurologic conference dedicated to Stanisław Lem’s work, a film and art programme, a concert Writers in Music, a book fair, several children’s events and much more. The futurological conference is a pilot project of the Tartu 2024 development programme.
The traditional preliminary event of Prima Vista, the Day of the Rose and the Book will take place in virtual form. On that day the laureate of the First Step contest will be announced, the speakers will be the very first laureate of the contest Anti Saar and other prize winners. In collaboration with publishers, the book fair will take place as a web campaign.
The traditional festival time in May will be marked with the international video project Sentimental Education of the non-profit organization Estonian Performance Poetry on the 7th of May: the videos will be presented at Prima Vista and the Liverpool festival WoW. The participants will be Estonian poet Tõnis Vilu who has inspired several videos, performance poet Joelle Taylor, and Adam Kammerling, a poet and theatre maker.
The main organizers of the festival are the NGO Literary Festival Prima Vista, Library of the University of Tartu, the Tartu Public Library, the Estonian Writers’ Union, and the Estonian Literary Society.
Additional information:
Annika Aas
communications manager
NGO Literary Festival Prima Vista
mob + 372 5266442