Estonian filmmaker demes: A network analysis within the Estonian Film Database

This article discusses ways to use link analysis and network analysis to study the evolution of film culture –how filmmakers have collaborated with each other and what kinds of films have resulted from their collaborations. The study is motivated by the concept of a “deme”, a con­cept developed by John Hartley and Jason Potts to refer to communities of creators that produce similar, thematically related work. This paper discusses our attempts to study the evolution of the demes within the broad networks of Estonian filmmakers based on data from the Estonian Film Database (EFD). The article discusses our method development for such a study and applies the method to explore the evolution of the demes of Estonian films and their maker communities from the 1950s until the 2010s.