9 November, 7 PM, Sapientia University
White Horse. A Short History of Hate (2017-1944) (75 min) / performance
by: Ioana Păun
with: Ilinca Manolache
live music: Diana Miron
text: Smaranda Nicolau
research: Laura Ștefănuț
producers: Ioana Păun and Cristina Găvruș

In 2016 a zealous TV journalist shames and humiliates those taking part at a historical court case – the State versus Ioan Ficior. 60 years before, Ioan Ficior, a zealous young communist, runs a prison where 100 people die due to mistreatment. And 20 years before that, during 1940’s, a zealous teenage Hungarian baron kills a peasant from his land in front of the man’s younger brother, Ioan Ficior. This all performed by an actress supported by live music and a tank full of fish.

Buy ticket

---

Film selection proposed by Radu Jude.

9 November, 5:30 PM, Tranzit House
Found Footage Magazine Presentation
presentation by: César Ustarroz, editor of Found Footage Magazine

Found Footage Magazine is an independent and printed film journal distributed worldwide. It offers theoretical, analytical and informative content that hinges on the use of archival images in media production practices.

Requiem for Survivors: Restoring Memory Through Found Footage Filmmaking (120 min)
short films selection by César Ustarroz

By salvaging archival footage, the films included in this program restore the memories of those who have been forgotten by the “official” historical account and, in some way or another, have been marginalized by the dominant culture. Excluded and denigrated people gain a renewed voice in re-assembled stories of forced displacements, unjust punishments and everlasting segregation. These found footage works offer a sense of restitution.

Within the selection, the following films will be presented:

The Highwater Trilogy (Bill Morrison, 2006)
35mm transferred to HD video | 31min. | B&W | sound

An environmental meditation told in three parts, using distressed archival images from 1920s newsreels, and set to music by David Lang and Michael Gordon. Ancient newsreel footage of storms, floods and icebergs produce a combination of anxiety and awe when viewed in the wake of recent meteorological disasters.

Dark Matter (Karel Doing, 2014)
35mm transferred to HD video | 20min. | color and B&W | sound

A personal archive of family portraits and landscape photographs is used together with material experiments on film emulsion. With the II World War as a backdrop, the film follows the trail of the filmmaker’s father through industrial structures, moody forests, and surreal half desert alongside abstract, highly detailed, and fast moving images. The film material itself tells a compelling story in form, color and rhythm. A variety of chemical, bio-chemical and mechanical techniques were used for the creation of these animated “direct” images.

An Ecstatic Experience (Ja’Tovia Gary, 2015)
16mm transferred to HD video | 6min. | color and B&W | sound

An experimental manipulation of documentary footage illustrating African-American oppression and their resistance. “An Ecstatic Experience” offers a way to investigate and work through the oppression that stereotypical images in the media can cast upon people of color.

Eût-elle été criminelle… (Jean-Gabriel Périot, 2006)
35mm transferred to HD video | 10min. | color and B&W | sound

In a montage of documentary footage, Jean-Gabriel Périot investigates the public punishment and humiliation of French women accused of having relationships with German men during the Second World War. To the alienated melody of the Marseillaise, the film runs through in fast motion the chronology of events from the turn of the last century to the liberation of France in the summer of 1944 and the retreat of the Germans, followed by rejoicing. The joyous spell is abruptly broken by acts of retribution, however, culminating in a public stigmatization of the women that recalls the persecution of people during the Third Reich.

Mass for the Dakota Sioux (Bruce Baillie, 1964)
16mm transferred to SD video | 20min. | color and B&W | sound
Courtesy of Canyon Cinema

An experimental film dedicated to the Dakota Sioux, which follows the form of the Christian Mass. “Mass for the Dakota Sioux” introduces a series of images of contemporary America interwoven with the ritual spiriting away of a dead Indian.

9 November, 8:00 PM, Dacia Cinema
Dead Nation (83 min)
directed and written by: Radu Jude
producer: Ada Solomon

A film constructed using the opposition of what a huge collection of recently discovered glass-plate photographs from the ’30s and ’40s tell us about Romania and what they do not show. The Dead Nation is a documentary-essay, which shows a stunning collection of photographs from a Romanian small town in the 1930s and 1940s. The soundtrack, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, shows us what the photographs do not: the rising of the anti-Semitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust, a topic which is not very talked about in the contemporary Romanian society.

The screening is followed by a talk with director Radu Jude and film critic Andrei Rus.

10 November, 7 PM, Dacia Cinema
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (180 min)
directed by: Andrei Ujică
sound and film editor: Dana Bunescu
visual consultant: Vivi Drăgan Vasile
producer: Velvet Moraru

The starting point of the film is Andrei Ujică’s thoughts that “After all, a dictator is simply an artist who is able to fully put into practice his egotism. It is a mere question of aesthetic level, whether he turns out to be Baudelaire or Bolintineanu, Louis XVI or Nicolae Ceausescu.” From a formal point of view, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu proves that it is possible to only use existing images to yield films focused on recent history, yet with an epic vein similar to that of the historical fiction cinema.

The screening is followed by a talk with director Andrei Ujică and film editor Dana Bunescu.

11 November, 4 PM, Tranzit House
Oh! Uomo (71 min)
directed and written by: Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi
music: Giovanna Marini, Luis Agudo
historical research: Diego Leoni
producer: Museo storico in Trento, Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra

The film on the postwar period completes the trilogy on the First World War, started with Prisoners of War and On the Heights All is Peace. From the emblems of totalitarianism to the individual physicality of human suffering. Representation of the new man, loaded with anger, ready for the totalitarian experience, emerged from war. Anatomical catalog of the wounded body. From deconstruction to artificial re-composition of the human body. But what kind of humanity is this that forgets and permits the repetition of horror?

12 November, 3 PM, Tranzit House
REVUE (82 min)
directed by: Sergei Loznitsa
sound: Vladimir Golovnitsky
producer: Ma.ja.de. Filmproduktion in co-production with St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio and MDR, in association with YLE TEEMA and Inspiration Films

Revue is based on archive propaganda newsreels produced in the USSR in the 50-s and 60-s. The film shows the almost forgotten side of the Soviet times and the way of thinking at that period. It explores the life of people all across the vast expanse of the Soviet Motherland, though full of hardship, deprivation and absurd rituals, but at the same time illuminated by the glorious shining of the communist illusion.

12 November, 5 PM, Tranzit House
No place for fools (82 min)
directed by: Oleg Mavromatti and Boryana Rossa
producers: Boryana Rossa and Andrey Silvestrov

The first feature film made entirely of YouTube videos. Sergey Astakhov is a gay man converted by Russian Church and state propaganda into an orthodox pro-Putin activist. Composed of terrifying Youtube videos some from Astahov’s blog, this documentary is the most radical insight into today’s Russia. ‘We must not give away our children to foreigners and homosexuals,’ says Sergey Astakhov. A few months prior to this pronouncement, Astahov himself confesses on camera that he is gay. We see him praising modern Moscow shopping malls, eulogizing on the pleasures of gay porn and drawing up all manner of lists – from his favorite songs to his illnesses. He considers his homosexuality one of the latter.

The screening is followed by a talk with philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz and film critic Andrei Rus.

---

Info about tickets

Free acces to all events, except for White Horse. A Short History of Hate (2017-1944).

Tickets: 25 lei full price / 15 lei reduced for students and pensioners

Tickets can be bought in advance online on Biletmaster.ro and at the Theater Agency (Agenia Teatrala – 14, tefan cel Mare Square) open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am to 2 pm and 3 am to 5 pm, and Wens Tour Agency (10, Eroilor Blvd.), open Monday to Friday, 9 am to 6 pm.

If available, tickets will also be sold on location 30 minutes before the event.