Director: Andrei Ujică
2010, România, 180 min
Festivals: Cannes 2010, New York Film Festival 2010, Cinéma du Réel 2011
Q&A: editor Dana Bunescu
Perhaps unfortunately, Nicolae Ceaușescu is the Romanian celebrity par excellence, simultaneously built by the state propaganda apparatus and self-fashioned following the contours of far Asian despots. This extraordinary documentary is made up exclusively of archival images, all approved either by Ceaușescu himself or by his apparatus, and traces a classic tragic trajectory, from the relative obscurity of the lower ranking apparatchik carrying the coffin of Romania’s last Stalinist leader, through a lone maverick moment in the Eastern Bloc, the awakening of the personality cult, and the loneliness of his last years reigning over a devastated country.
Sunday, October 8th, 14:00, Cinema Arta