Movie review: ‘Disco and Atomic War’

It is easy to feel that pop culture is merely a superficial distraction. Yet what if those junky TV shows and trashy stars were actually the leading edge of a revolutionary vanguard, overturning whole systems of government?

Such is the idea posited by “ Disco and Atomic War,” a cheeky, odd little documentary that blends family photos and vintage newsreels with new interviews and re-created scenes to tell a story that is at once extremely personal and sweepingly broad.

When he was growing up in Estonia, then part of the Soviet Union, director Jaak Kilmi would take pictures of his television set. It was the most interesting thing he knew. Estonians — using bootleg devices made by, among others, Kilmi’s father — would tune their sets to receive broadcasts from a TV tower in Finland, separated from Estonia by only a small body of water.

Imagine getting only the drab state-sponsored programming of a totalitarian government, then suddenly being face to face with the gleaming teeth, bourgeois problems and high-tech sheen of shows such as “Dallas” and “Knight Rider”?

According to the film, people traveled from throughout Estonia to within Finnish broadcast range for a showing of the erotic film “Emmanuelle”; nine months later, there was an uptick in the Estonian birth rate. This sort of cultural “soft power” proved just as significant in the Cold War as missile heads and the space race. And although like the Cold War itself, the film does drag on at times, “Disco” really is a delight.

“Disco and Atomic War.” Unrated. 1 hour, 20 minutes. At the Laemmle Sunset 5.