Perspectives on History: Romanian Cinema Since 1989

December 6, 2019–February 27, 2020

Thirty years after the fall of the Ceauşescu regime, this series samples the best in Romanian cinema from the last three decades.

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  • The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu

  • The Oak

  • I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians

  • Stuff and Dough

  • 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

    Cristian Mungiu
    Romania, 2007
    Friday, December 6 7 PM

    Two young women go underground to terminate an unwanted pregnancy in this gripping, prizewinning drama. “Beautifully realistic, faultlessly made” (Los Angeles Times).

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  • Stuff and Dough

    Cristi Puiu
    Romania, 2001
    Sunday, December 8 7 PM

    A hopeful young entrepreneur decides to raise money by delivering an unknown package in this deadpan road movie, inspired by Jarmusch’s Down by Law. The debut film by the director of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

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  • The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

    Cristi Puiu
    Romania, 2005
    Friday, December 13 7 PM

    Puiu’s saga of the last hours in the life of a cranky Bucharest widower is “both sad and darkly funny . . . sharply conceived and richly populated” (Chicago Reader). “A thorny masterpiece” (New York Times).

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  • 12:08 East of Bucharest

    Corneliu Porumboiu
    Romania, 2006
    Sunday, December 15 7 PM

    A provincial TV talk show turns into a battle over the history of the Romanian revolution in Porumboiu’s hilarious allegory, winner of the Caméra d’Or at Cannes.

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  • The Oak

    Lucian Pintilie
    Romania, 1992

    New 4K Restoration

    Sunday, January 12 7 PM

    A strong-willed Bucharest schoolteacher finds herself adrift and assaulted in Pintilie’s blisteringly apocalyptic farce of the last days of Ceauşescu’s rule, fueled by an “imaginative hysteria that rattles with sustained fury” (J. Hoberman).

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  • The State of Things

    Stere Gulea
    Romania, 1995
    Sunday, January 19 7 PM

    A hospital nurse speaks out against the corruption of the secret police—and pays the price—in this uncompromising examination of immorality, revolution, and social conviction. “One of the most powerful accounts of the Romanian Revolution” (Film Society of Lincoln Center).

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  • The Paper Will Be Blue

    Radu Muntean
    Romania, 2006
    Saturday, January 25 5:30 PM

    A clueless tank crew wanders Bucharest’s chaotic streets on the night that Ceauşescu falls in Radu Muntean’s wry, humanist portrait of historic times.

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  • Child’s Pose

    Călin Peter Netzer
    Romania, 2013
    Sunday, February 2 7 PM

    Grand prize winner at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, this “ferocious psychological drama with the pace of a thriller” (Los Angeles Times) follows an upper-class Bucharest architect who’ll stop at nothing to keep her grown son out of jail. 

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  • Videograms of a Revolution

    Andrei Ujica, Harun Farocki
    Germany, 1992
    Wednesday, February 12 7 PM
    CANCELED: Andrei Ujică in Person

    The infamous televised speech Nicolae Ceauşescu delivered on the night his regime fell in 1989 is the centerpiece of this sophisticated investigation of the power of images.

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  • Out of the Present

    Andrei Ujica
    Russia, 1995
    Thursday, February 13 7 PM
    CANCELED: Andrei Ujică in Person

    Ujică’s Russian-made precursor to The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu uses found footage to revisit the tale of a Soviet cosmonaut whose time in space corresponded with the sudden downfall of the Soviet Union.

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  • The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu

    Andrei Ujica
    Romania, 2010
    Sunday, February 16 12:30 PM
    CANCELED: Andrei Ujică in Person

    A portrait of a nation—and a cult of personality—through found footage, Ujică’s dissection of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu’s media masquerade is “a cinematic tour de force” (New York Times).

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  • Soldiers: A Story from Ferentari

    Ivana Mladenović
    Romania, 2017
    Sunday, February 23 7 PM

    Two men form an unlikely couple in one of Bucharest’s toughest Romany neighborhoods in this naturalist drama, a gay, Romany Romeo and Juliet.

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  • I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians

    Radu Jude
    Romania, 2018
    Thursday, February 27 7 PM

    Radu Jude dissects the rise of neofascism and the reemergence of anti-Semitism in Europe in this metafictional black comedy. “A complicated meditation on the responsibilities—and limits—of art in the face of horror” (New York Times).

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