Estonia’s first homegrown animated film, when known about at all, was considered lost until the autumn of 1986, when it was discovered as part of the collection of the Estonian Temperance Society (1891–1940), stored at the Central Historical Archives of Soviet Estonia in the city of Tartu. Curiously, memory of the short had so completely disappeared that contemporary filmmakers never even mentioned it in their memoirs, and yet it was written about in newspapers from the period. At the time, Estonian cinemas were filled with American and German animation, and Kutsu-Juku seiklusi doesn’t try to hide its influences, as can be seen in the opening intertitle: “This film is an exercise in a style ruled by major filmmaking countries like Germany and the U.S.A. Despite technical difficulties, we did our utmost to ensure that Juku the Dog wins the hearts of every Estonian film lover from its very first release.”
Consisting of more than 5,000 drawings, the film runs for four minutes, and is frustratingly missing its ending. It’s believed that the animator, Elmar Jaanimägi (1907-1937), director Voldemar Päts (1902–1942), and Aleksander Teppor (1888-1943), owner of the photo studio where it was produced, planned to make an entire series of animation shorts in the style of early Walt Disney. Juku the Dog has obvious similarities to Mickey Mouse, and the film has borrowed other elements from Disney films, such as The Skeleton Dance. While another film in the series was announced, it’s unknown if it was ever made. Equally, the fate of the soundtrack, made in Berlin, remains a mystery: the title card states that the music was recorded on Parlophon records by A/S Tormolen & Company.
Voldemar Päts, a nephew of the Estonian head of state Konstantin Päts, was affiliated with Balduin Kusbock’s film studio in the early 1920s, and by the 1930s had developed into one of Estonia’s leading cameramen. In 1937 his colleague from Kutsu-Juku seiklusi, the illustrator Elmar Jaanimägi, was working on another animated short featuring the characters Crafty Hans and the Old Devil, but the film was never completed; he died on 3 November in Vyborg, near the Finnish border, of injuries sustained in a knife attack. A drawing of Juku the Dog is on Jaanimägi’s gravestone, and in 2001 a plaque commemorating Estonia’s first animated film was placed on the site of Aleksander Teppor’s studio.

Maria Mang