Ilmar Taska

Ilmar Taska with his novel Pobeda 1946 next to a Pobeda

Ilmar Taska (born May 21, 1953 in Vyatka , Russia ) is an Estonian film director, producer, screenwriter and writer.

Life

Ilmar Taska graduated from high school in Tallinn in 1971 and then studied at the Moscow Film School , where he graduated in film studies in 1976. He then worked for Tallinnfilm for two years before he left the Estonian SSR in 1978 after marrying a Swede and emigrated to Sweden. Taska worked there as an actor and director. In 1985 he went to the USA on a scholarship, where he worked as a screenwriter and producer, including in Hollywood .

Ilmar Taska is a member of the Estonian Writers' Union .

Literary work

At the beginning of the 21st century, Taska made his debut with short prose. After the success of his short story "Pobeda" he decided to write a novel on the same topic and in 2016 published the novel Pobeda 1946 . The title refers to the Soviet GAZ-M20 Pobeda ( Russian победа , Russian for victory ), launched in 1946 , and thus has a symbolic effect because it expresses the Soviet foreign determination in Estonia. The novel deals with the establishment of Soviet power and the secret service terror regime of fear and mistrust from the perspective of a little boy. In 1946 he had to see his father disappear while his mother was harassed by the secret service and his aunt, a celebrated singer in the Estonia Theater before the war , was now separated from her lover, a London BBC journalist, by the Iron Curtain . The book received great critical acclaim, including a. because it "does its enlightening, history-book-like task well, especially for the younger generation, and Ilmar Taska zips emphatically into Estonian literary history with his" Pobeda "."

Awards

• 2014 Literature Prize from Looming magazine

bibliography

• Parem kui elu ('Better than life'). Tallinn: Hea Lugu 2011. 228 pp.
• Pobeda 1946 . Tallinn: Varrak 2016. 306 pp.

Translations

• Danish: Pobeda 1946 (Birgita Bonde Hansen). Copenhagen: Jensen & Dalgaard 2018. 310 pp.
• German: Pobeda 1946 . From the Estonian by Cornelius Hasselblatt . Zurich: Kommode Verlag 2017. 297 pp.
• English: Pobeda 1946. A Car Called Victory . Transl. by Christopher Moseley. London: Norvik Press 2018. 246 pp.
• Finnish: Pobeda 1946 . Suomentanut Jouko Vanhanen. Helsinki: WSOY 2017. 315 pp. The Finnish reviews were very praiseworthy and sometimes drew a comparison with Sofi Oksanen .
• Latvian: Pobeda 1946 (Lelde Rozite). Riga: Jumava SIA 2019. 247 pp.
• Lithuanian: Pobeda 1946 (Danutė Sirijos Giraitė). Vilnius: Homo liber 2017. 286 pp.
• Dutch: Pobeda 1946 (Frans van Nes). Groningen: Nobelman 2020. 293 pp.
• Swedish: Skönare än livet ( Parem kui elu ). Malmö: Soleka 2014. 109 pp.

Filmography

• 1983-1986. Naabermaa Eesti TV series and documentary about Paul Wunderlich .
• 1992 Back in the USSR , ( Deran Sarafian directed ), producer and co-writer.
• 1993 Candles in the Dark , (directed by Maximilian Schell ), producer.
• 1999 Out of the Cold ( Alexander Buravsky directed ), co-producer.
• 2004 We won't sleep tonight , director and co-writer of the script was Jaan Tatte .
• 2009 wing of fear , director and one of the producers.

literature

• Hille Karm: Ilmar Taska turns his talents to writing fiction , in: Estonian Literary Magazine 40 (Spring 2015), pp. 14-19. [1]
• Elo Lindsalu: Olevikku paisatud killud , in: Looming 6/2016, pp. 894-897. [2]
• Imbi Paju : Pobeda 1946 AKA the Dream Car: A Novel of Startling Beauty , in: UpNorth February 24, 2017. [3]
• Maarja Vaino: Üksi Pobeda vastu , in: Sirp , May 13, 2016. [4]

Web links

• Homepage
• Biography, works, excerpts (Estonian Literature Information Center)
• Ilmar Taska in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In: Looming 10/2013, pp. 1352-1355.
2. ↑ Elo Lindsalu: Olevikku paisatud killud in: Looming 6/2016, S. 897th
3. ↑ http://www.savonsanomat.fi/kulttuuri/kirjat/Ilmar-Taska-Pobeda-1946/980882 (review in Savon Sanomat, May 7, 2017, Finnish)