Event

Videograms of a Revolution

Sat Dec 07: 5.15pm

Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujic
Germany & Romania
1992
1h 47m
Series - Paranoid Data: Pre-Millennium Tension in Film

About
** Co-presented with Romanian Film Festival / American Romanian Cultural Society (ARCS) and Making Waves New Romanian Cinema on the occasion of The Romanians film series coming to NWFF in 2020! **

* Post-screening discussion led by Otilia Baraboi (ARCS Executive Director) and Ileana Marin (ARCS President)! The conversation will continue at Saint John's Bar and Eatery (719 E Pike St) following Q&A. *

Videograms of a Revolution is a compilation and distillation of footage shot throughout the latter days of 1989 in Bucharest, Romania, as demonstrators in opposition to the regime of Nicolae Ceauescu began to document a revolution in real time using the periods most immediate means of communication: Television. As a vocal resistance began forming during Ceauescu's final speech on December 21st, it became clear that a tide was shifting and this moment must be seized to spread the word. So demonstrators forcibly occupied the television station and began broadcasting uninterrupted for the next 120 hours with the explicit intent on overthrowing Ceauescu and holding him accountable for his crimes. What played out was a revolution with such immediacy, Ceauescu was sentenced to death by execution on Christmas Day, broadcasts still running live for this moment.

Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujics remarkable film recreates this stream of broadcasts, but more pointedly shows the power of technology when its handed over to the people, and that news could in fact be delivered with an immediacy we almost take for granted these days. The impact of this revolution not only had a lasting impact for demonstrators all around the world, but arguably changed how people all around the world engage with technology as a means of immediate communication and organization.