Romania

Romania

Hungary

Yugoslavia Bosnia, Herzegovinian,Serbia, Montenegro

Ukraine

Bulgaria

Moldova

Romanian Neighbors

Romania present day

Romanian History (in a nutshell)

• 1859 The modern Romania was born when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia merged

• 1914 Outbreak of WWI Romania fights on Allied side

• 1939 September: World War II starts

• 1940 Soviet Union delivered an ultimatum to Romania and 2 days later occupied Bessarabia and North Bukovina, Romania fights on German side against Soviet Union

• 1944 Romania switches sides and joins Allied forces. (Hungary threat)

• 1947 In the elections of 19 November 1946, the Communist-led Bloc of Democratic Parties (BPD) claimed 84% of the votes. These elections were characterized by widespread irregularities, including intimidation, electoral fraud, and assassinations. The Socialist Republic of Romania was a single party socialist state that existed until 1989.

• 1965 Nicolae Ceausescu becomes Romanian Communist Party leader

Ceauşescu’s Reign

• In his early years in power, Ceauşescu was genuinely popular, agricultural goods were abundant, consumer goods began to reappear, there was a cultural thaw, and, what was important abroad, he spoke out against the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

• Nadia Elena Comăneci is a Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympicgold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the first femalegymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. • During the 1980s, Ceauşescu started an Austerity program to repay national debt, he

also built himself a palace.• This led to a shortage of available goods for the average Romanian. By 1984, despite a

high crop yield and increased food production, wide scale food rationing was introduced. Only one in five streetlights was to be kept on, and television was reduced to a single channel broadcasting just 2 hours each day.

• All shops were to close no later than 5:30 pm, in order to preserve electricity. Heating fuel was rationed.

Ceauşescu’s Downfall

• Control over society became more strict with phone taps installed, and with Securitate recruiting more agents, extending censorship and keeping tabs and records on a large segment of the population. By 1989, according to CNSAS (the Council for Studies of the Archives of the Former Securitate), one in three Romanians was an informant for the Securitate.

• An anti-communist riot in Braşov on 15 November 1987 was the main political event that announced the imminent fall of communism in Romania.

• It was a truckers revolt - a strike that began on the night-shift of 14 November, and continued the next morning with a march downtown to the council party HQ.

The Revolutions of 1989• Romania was nearly the last of the Eastern European communist governments

to fall; its fall was also the most violent up to that time.

• Poland April, Hungary May-ish, East Germany November, Czechoslovakia Nov. 28th, Bulgaria Dec 11th, Romania Dec 25th ish.

• On 21 December, the meeting at the Central Committee Building in Bucharest turned into chaos and finally into riot, The night of 21 December was a fight between protesters and Securitate, police and part of the army forces. More than 1100 protesters died during the fight. On the morning of the next day, 22 December, it was announced that the army general was dead by suicide; people were besieging the CC Building, while the Securitate did nothing to help Ceauşescu. He soon fled in an helicopter from the rooftop of the CC Building, only to find himself abandoned in Targoviste, where he and his wife Elena were formally tried and shot on 25 December.

The Revolutions of 1989• Romania was nearly the last of the Eastern European communist governments

to fall; its fall was also the most violent up to that time.

• Poland April, Hungary May-ish, East Germany November, Czechoslovakia Nov. 28th, Bulgaria Dec 11th, Romania Dec 25th ish.

• On 21 December, the meeting at the Central Committee Building in Bucharest turned into chaos and finally into riot, The night of 21 December was a fight between protesters and Securitate, police and part of the army forces. More than 1100 protesters died during the fight. On the morning of the next day, 22 December, it was announced that the army general was dead by suicide; people were besieging the CC Building, while the Securitate did nothing to help Ceauşescu. He soon fled in an helicopter from the rooftop of the CC Building, only to find himself abandoned in Targoviste, where he and his wife Elena were formally tried and shot on 25 December.

other clips and “conspiracies”• The execution video and trial. (From a BBC Documentary) Points of interest: trial 1:22 – 1:50, moment of execution 4:07-5:10

• Still image of corpsesIn January 1990 on German private television, Romanian doctors confirmed that widely broadcast images of dead bodies that had supposedly shown victims of the rebellion actually show autopsied corpses from a nearby hospital. After some copyright haggles, the first integral documentation of the trial and execution of Nicolai and Elena Ceausescu was shown on French public TV in April 1990. A few days later, experts raised doubts about the authenticity of some of these images. Further investigation revealed that about six hours after their deaths, the Ceausescu had been re-executed for TV.

Many Romanians have suspected that Iliescu and other leading party members seized the opportunity of public unrest to stage a revolution, and seize power. The secret service was ordered to shoot enough people to make the revolution credible, without actually stopping the demonstrators. source

Andrei Ujică1951-

• studied literature in Timişoara, Bucharest He moved to Germany in 1981. In 1990 he began making films. Together with Harun Farocki, he created Videograms of a Revolution, a film which has become a standard work in Europe when referring to relationships between political power and the media and the end of the Cold War, and which was listed by the magazine Les Cahiers du Cinema as one of the top 10 subversive films of all time.

• His next work, Out of the Present, told the story of the cosmonaut Sergei Kirkalyvov who spent 10 months on board MIR, while back on Earth, the Soviet Union collapsed. The film has been compared to classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. His latest work, Unknown Quantity, creates a fictional conversation between Paul Virilio and Svetlana Alexievich, author of "Voices from Chernobyl", exploring the witness's protocol and the generation of history into catastrophe.

• In 2001, he became a professor for film at the Karlsruhe University of Art and Design. He founded the ZKM Film Institute in 2002 and is its director.

• FILMOGRAPHY• 1992: Videograms of a Revolution (director)• 1992: Kamera und Wirklichkeit (director and screenwriter)• 1995: Out of the Present (director and screenwriter)• 2000: 2 Pasolini'• 2005: Unknown Quantity• 2010: The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

Harun Farocki 1944 -

• Born in Czech Republic, he’s a German filmmaker.

• He attended the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin from 1966 to 1968, and taught at Berkeley from 1993 to 1999.

• filmography