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The filmmaker between the garden walls

Tartu City MuseumExhibition
Time of occurrence: 30.11.2022-19.03.2023
Place of occurrence: Tartu City Museum, Narva mnt 24, Tartu

Exhibition about the life and work of Aksella and Theodor Luts in Brazil, 1946–1980

What is the feeling of a foreigner who has lost contact with his homeland, and whose creative succsess has been left behind for years?

Theodor Luts: “We have built a high wall around our yard, so when we step into the garden, we are in our own world.”

Like many emigrants, he would have preferred to spend his retirement in Estonia, in his native Tartu, but it was not to be his destiny and, wandering through wartime Finland and Sweden, he spent the last years of his life in Brazil. His wife Aksella became his companion and devoted herself to the film and … him. This is also where the main event of the exhibition begins, the action of which runs through various topics, touching both spiritual and physical points of reference in the life of the Lutses, and opens the world of thoughts of the protagonists, Aksella and Theodor, through letters, memories and newspaper features, supported by many photos and video footages, recorded during the Brazilian collection expedition in 2016.

Theodor Luts (b. 14.08.1896 Palamuse – d. 24.09.1980 Sao Paulo) studied at Simuna parish elementary school, Tartu Trade School and St. Petersburg Commercial High School. During the Estonian Independence War, he served in the famous Julius Kuperjanov’s Partisan Battallion. Theodor married Aksella Hildegard Kapsta in 1926. Together they earned a living as ballroom dance teachers in Tartu, later both moved into the film industry. In 1944, they left Estonia via Finland to Sweden and then to Brazil.

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