Screened as part of NZIFF 2011

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu 2010

Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu

Directed by Andrei Ujika

An ingenious found-footage film which audaciously documents the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu solely by repurposing his own official propaganda films. “Transfixing, illuminating and haunting.” — Time Out

Romania In English and Romanian with English subtitles
180 minutes Colour and B&W

Director

Producer

Velvet Moraru

Editor

Dana Bunescu

With

Nicolae Ceauşescu
,
Elena Ceauşescu
,
Chivu Stoica
,
Emil Bodnăras
,
Ion Gheorghe Maurer
,
Manea Mănescu
,
Charles de Gaulle
,
Alexander Dubček
,
Richard Nixon
,
Mao Zedong
,
Jimmy Carter
,
Elizabeth II
,
Gheorghe Cioară
,
Constantin Pârvulescu
,
Kim Il-sung

Festivals

Cannes (Out of Competition), Melbourne, Toronto, New York, London 2010; Rotterdam, San Francisco 2011

Elsewhere

This ingenious found-footage assemblage audaciously documents the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu solely by repurposing a treasure trove of official Communist-era newsreels and propaganda. The result is a mordant fiction in which we see Ceauşescu hobnob with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, host President Nixon on a state visit to Bucharest and receive a spectacularly weird, almost psychedelic welcome to North Korea, but see nothing of the bread queues, the overflowing orphanages or the economic ruin that crippled his country. — MM

“‘Autobiography’ is the operative word. This is the story of Ceauşescu as he would have written it in moving images if he could have. Romanians, of course, will write a mirror-opposite story as they watch, and the ironies will be rich – a black enough comedy to make one weep. But even for those with only the barest knowledge of this particular history, the movie is fascinating.” — Amy Taubin, Artforum