Nicolae Ceaușescu

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They do not care. We say we care, but we do nothing, and nothing ever changes. It is normal. Welcome to the post-truth world. How we got to where we are now…

The views and thoughts of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood have never been more relevant than today. Readers turn to her work for answers as they confront the rise of authoritarian leaders, deal with increasingly intrusive technologies, and discuss climate change. Her books are useful as survival tools for hard times. But few know her private life. Who is the woman behind the stories? How does she always seem to know what is coming?

In 1981, chalk slogans written in uppercase letters started appearing in public spaces in the Romanian city of Botoşani. They demanded freedom, alluded to the democratic developments taking place in Romania’s socialist sister countries or simply called for improvements in the food supply. Mugur Călinescu was behind them, who was still at school at the time and whose case is documented in the files of the Romanian secret police. Theatre director Gianina Cărbunariu created a documentary play based on this material.

In the summer of 1989, the 13th edition of the World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Pyongyang. Thousands of socialist youth from 177 countries celebrated their belief in a better society and international solidarity.

A film documenting the exorbitant 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire, held in October 1971, organized by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and attended by leaders from around the world.

The world managed to testify the execution of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, on Christmas day after a turmoil of events. At the same time, some viewers doubted the veracity of such actual killings. This short film challenges the notion of reality while adding some fiction to those events.

After the Romanian Revolution reached its peak during the Christmas Holidays of 1989, Romania’s Communist patriarch and his wife Elena were sentenced to death by a military court and accordingly gunned down. Chris Marker’s short video-collage Détour Ceauşescu documents how the execution was depicted by France’s national TV-channel TF1.

A family who emigrated to Germany, escaping from Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship in Romania, recalls a world without opportunities or hope for the future, of ever-present fear and a constant struggle for survival. They look back on what made them exchange their home for the promise of freedom in an uncertain future.

Charles de Gaulle, the first president (1958-1969) of the Vth Republic, France’s current system of government, left his mark on the country . He was statesman of action and has been compared to a monarch. This film depicts the general’s personality through the great events of his presidential term, at a time when the world was undergoing considerable changes.

Death Scenes 3 is a documentary film and presents a collection of archive photos from the LAPD's files, showcasing a range of early twentieth-century crime photos, including suicides, murders, fire-related deaths, and gangland-style murders.

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Here is the story of the entire life of Nicolae Ceaușescu, a peasant's son who managed to become the most powerful man in Romania. Including original archival footage and historical re-enactments, the story is told by those who lived it, those who knew him intimately, followed him, served him and carried out his orders: fellow prisoners, " his 'double', personal assistants, his personal security men, those who accompanied him on foreign trips, his translator, advisers, diplomats and family members.

The story of a famously lavish five-day party held by the Shah of Iran in 1971 to celebrate 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. The event was held at a specially constructed oasis surrounded by a city of tents and attended by 60 world leaders, who enjoyed a five-course banquet and a pageant featuring thousands of soldiers dressed in historical costume. However, the decadence on display had far-reaching consequences, breeding resentment of the Shah's regime among the Iranian people.

1968, The Socialist Republic of Romania. Women catch up on the latest tendencies in beachwear, the young hippies of Hamburg are harshly criticized by Romanian students, while Nicolae Ceaușescu reads the famous defiance speech against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. Floating solemnly over all this is The Internationale, sung on a stadium by a crowd of pioneers dressed in white shirts and red ties. A certainty for each probability: the documentary is at the same time a history lesson and an ideological warning sign, the director’s endeavour permanently draws our attention to the functions of the propaganda film, yet without tarnishing the fascination that dwells in the core of the images, that of the figures that wave at us from a past buried in commonplaces and political parti pris.

A minute-by-minute chronology of the Romanian revolution in December 1989 in Bucharest. This cinematic montage of live footage from the state television company TVR and video taken by numerous amateurs becomes a new media-based form of historiography.

Veteran journalist and author Edward Behr spent a year investigating the rise and fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. Executed on Christmas Day 1989, Ceausescu was once a hero to his own people, and in the west. Behr's film reveals the truth behind the myth, in a tale of megalomania, farce, and horror.

Two journalists born in the mid '80s decide to take a look back at how their country changed in the last 30 years since the fall of communism. The end product is a documentary containing footage of political events and historical milestones significant to Romania accompanied by a narrator's voice walking the viewer through the events, and also interviews with Romanian politicians and other influential public figures sharing their thoughts and their different views on those events.

The three-hour-long documentary covers 25 years in the life of Nicolae Ceaușescu and was made using 1,000 hours of original footage from the National Archives of Romania.

Documentary on the Romanian rock band Phoenix.

A first hand account of one of the biggest cases of human trafficking during the Cold War. A story of greed, courage, hope and remorse.

A unique document of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, what began as a documentary about the liberalization of Czechoslovakia evolved into a record of the entry of Russian tanks into Prague.

The images of the condemnation and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena on Christmas Day in 1989 are etched deeply in the collective unconscious of several generations of television viewers. Exactly 20 years after its occurrence, the famous show trial was re-enacted in a historically reproduced setting. The film interweaves the stage production with interviews conducted with eyewitnesses and archive material, and takes a look backstage in the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest.