Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

In 2010, Andrei Ujica made the“Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” documentary. Archive images belonging to the Romanian Television and National Film Archive make up an original footage, which lead to generatingthe dictator’s biography in an almost metaphoric manner.

The movie is suggestively built as regards the rise and fall of a dictator. In the movie opening, the images from the 1989 trial of Ceausescu couple are relevant; those scenes also close the documentary. Beyond the trial parts, another beginning of that movie is made up of footage from the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, when young Ceausescu appeared as the new hope of Romanian communism.

Then follows the career rise of Nicolae Ceausescu, his visits to China, UK, USA, and North Korea.The meetings of dictator with various political actors render the movie a chronical of that era. In addition, over 100 hours of film on which the movie was based presented the life of Ceausescu family while on vacation, at funerals, and at parties.

In connection to the Romanian reality mirrored by the documentary, one can notice the life of people back then, their behavior, their initial enthusiasm and terror in the end, which the Romanians’ faces showed. The movie is built as such that it presents the rise and fall of a leader, imagesflowing in a manner gradually suggesting the end of a regime. At the same time, the film catches the key moments of the years when the footage was made, times that were not only political.

An unknown atmosphere is created for those that have not lived or experienced the Romanian communism; the movie brings back memories of a regime that could no longer continue. The movie speaks for itself and the audience understands the truth only from the images showed.“Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” proposes the summary of an era, concentrating its entire atmosphere in only three hours.

It premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival of 2010 and “New York Times" indicated it as being one of the best 20 movies of year 2011. At the same time, the movie won the prize ofSpotlight section in Cinema Eye Honors, the most important awards dedicated to non-fiction movie, and the Grand Prize in the Documentaries section of the Film Festival ofBergen, Norway.  

References and photographs:

http://www.filmedocumentare.com/autobiografia-lui-nicolae-ceausescu/

www.youtube.com  

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