Film Forum

(1992, Andrei Ujica and Harun Farocki) Using amateur video, and footage from both the state film industry and demonstrator-controlled Bucharest TV, a vivid record of the ’89 uprising, showing how technology not only records but fosters change. DCP. Approx. 106 min.

Reviews

“We get all of the broadcast glitches, unedited feeds, powergrabbing chaos, and epochal please-stand-by ellipses; as civilians defend the TV station with combat rifles, unidentified counter-revolutionary snipers hole up in massive and empty high-rise buildings the dictator had built and then abandoned. The sense of exhilarating liberation and history made as we watch is consistently leavened by the weird distance, between citizens and their own revolt, occupied by TV cameras and monitors. By the end of the week, and the Ceausescus’ executions, nothing is real – or historical – until it is seen on television.”
– Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice