1 village, 1.000 tractors, 100.000 tons of cabbages & potatoes each year - which are hardly sold and eventually destroyed. Is there any way out?
Meet American fighter pilots and bombers who raided Romanian targets in WW-II including its major oilfields centered on Ploesti and Romanians who defended them. 'Ace' pilot interviews, both American and Romanian, as well as US Air Force prisoners experiences are explored through rarely viewed Romanian archive footage. The documentary is seen through the eyes and words of Nicholas Dimancescu. He journeys back to Romania both to discover his own roots and also to uncover the stories of American and Romanian airmen who raided and defended Romania's oil refineries during World War II. The experiences of wartime 'aces' on both sides are recounted and two of them, once enemies who attacked one another over Romania, meet for the first time 66 years later.
Poslední revoluce
Due to a pandemic, the Electric Castle music festival shifts into an intimate concert staged for cameras instead, with three bands and no live audience.
A deceptively simple set-up: the director and his father watch a 1988 football match which the father refereed, their commentary accompanying the original television images in real time. A Bucharest derby between the country’s leading teams, Dinamo and Steaua, taking place in heavy snow, one year before the revolution that toppled Ceaușescu.
A documentary that exposes the shocking truths behind industrial food production and food wastage, focusing on fishing, livestock and crop farming. A must-see for anyone interested in the true cost of the food on their plate.
Procreation is the social duty of all fertile women, was the political thinking during the 1960s and 1970s in Romania. In 1966, Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, in which he forbade abortion for all women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children. All forms of contraception were totally banned. The New Romanian Man was born. By 1969, the country had a million babies more than the previous average. Romanian society was rapidly changing. By using very interesting archival footage and excerpts from old fiction films and by interviewing famous personalities from that time – gynecologists or mothers who were part of the new society - the director revives this period of tremendous oppression of personal freedom. Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters, and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them.
In 1959, in Romania, six former members of the nomenclature and the secret police organize a hold up of the National Bank. After their arrest, the state forces them to play themselves in a film which reconstitutes the crime and the investigation. At the end of their trial, filmed live, they are sentenced to death and executed. except the women, Monica Sevianu that due to the fact that she had 2 children she was punished to do hard work for life.
Six widows demand compensation for the death of their husbands, who were killed during a worker's strike. The women are arrested and taken to the police quarters, where the authorities try to make them retract their statements, but it turns out they're not so easily intimidated.
A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.
A Roma beggar on his knees raises many extreme emotions: guilt, rage, sympathy and frustration. Most people just walk on by, but there is always someone willing to help. In this film, the director follows the confrontations between the Roma beggars from Romania and Finnish people, and is forced to question, over and over again, her own ideas about helping.
In 1947, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito visited, for the first time, Romania. Its communist regime gave him, as present, a painting from a great Romanian artist Ion Andeescu: 'The Leafless Forest'. In the 60s, a young art critic, Radu Bogdan, decided to elaborate a monograph dedicated to the great painter, including reproduction of the painting given to Tito. After countless problems, he obtained the permission to photograph the painting. The moment they took the painting off the wall, they found - a microphone. Somebody was spying on Tito...
A public service announcement condemning the ominous obstacle of social parasitism and delinquency amongst wayward youth unwilling to contribute to Romania’s socialist advancement.
A documentary portrait of legendary Perfect Ten gymnast Nadia Comaneci after becoming an icon in the 1976 Olympics, during her Romanian period, and her challenging years under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu.
1968, The Socialist Republic of Romania. Women catch up on the latest tendencies in beachwear, the young hippies of Hamburg are harshly criticized by Romanian students, while Nicolae Ceaușescu reads the famous defiance speech against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. Floating solemnly over all this is The Internationale, sung on a stadium by a crowd of pioneers dressed in white shirts and red ties. A certainty for each probability: the documentary is at the same time a history lesson and an ideological warning sign, the director’s endeavour permanently draws our attention to the functions of the propaganda film, yet without tarnishing the fascination that dwells in the core of the images, that of the figures that wave at us from a past buried in commonplaces and political parti pris.
The fascinating portrait of Ion Bârlàdeanu. The touching and inspiring story of a man who literally lived in the gutter for 20 years - and in the meantime managed to create paintings and collages which are now exhibited alongside works by Andy Warhol or Marcel Duchamp.
Set in early 19th century Wallachia, Romania, a policeman, Costandin, is hired by a nobleman to find a Gypsy slave who has run away from his estate after having an affair with his wife.
The film starts with a long, static shot of the sun rising above the hills near the Roma village of Hetea in Romania. We only hear the sounds of birds, including a cuckoo. In the distance, a satellite dish figures on a roof. Slowly, the daily routine begins. We see more and more activity, like the harnessing of a horse to a cart, loading stripped tree trunks, collecting water from a pipe, playing soccer and a girl getting punished with a severe slap on her arm. These scenes are mostly captured from a distance. Then, towards noon, the fat is in the fire. The camera looks for the villagers who argue with each other and registers how an old man paces up and down the street. Because the images have not been subtitled (intentionally), the meaning of the quarrel remains unclear. The film does not mention any names or other facts, either. The absence of this context makes this documentary into a picturesque impression.
Charming amateur film featuring the Eisner family, who emigrated to Britain from Romania the year this film was made.
A more experimental aproach to labor protection films. In the line of Săucan's style, the soundtrack is as important as the image, the threatening music, full of shrillness, composed by Ion Dumitrescu potentiating the visual construction that mixes - in a montage reminiscent of the Soviet avant-garde school of the 1920s - all kinds of shooting techniques and frame combinations.