Sewing Machine

Directed by Ülo Pikkov

Sewing Machine is a film about the town of Pechory (Petseri) and its people, told through the life story of my great-grandmother. My great-grandmother’s father, who was the deputy mayor of Pechory, was killed by the Bolsheviks because he refused to give the keys to the town monastery to the revolutionaries. A few months later, the armored trains of the Estonian War of Independence reached Pechory, and the town was liberated. One of the soldiers of the armored train, a Danish volunteer, had a film camera with him, and he recorded the oldest film footage of Pechory, and somewhere on that film is also my great-grandmother.