Cinematic images of nation-ness: Space, time and gender in Young Eagles (Estonia) and Lāčplēsis (Latvia)

In this article, I analyse cinematic time and space and their interaction, in which nation-ness is articulated as a unifying identity in the epic films Lāčplēsis/Bear-Slayer (Latvia, Aleksandrs Rusteik is, 1930) and Noored Kotkad/Young Eagles (Estonia, Theodor Luts, 1927, digitally remastered in 2008). In discussing the time space organization of nation-ness in these films, I address representations of the political ‘birth of a nation’ and modern national identity. I discuss the ways in which the narratives in Young Eagles and Lāčplēsis re-claim a traditional gender binary, predicated on a splitting and differentiating relationship with Otherness, embodied in the sexual threat of male enemy figures and enacted in history, politics and ethnicity.