Synopsis
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, who was still at school at the time and whose case is documented in the files of the Romanian secret police, was behind them.
A word from Tënk
First, there was a theatre play. Written by playwright Gianina Carbunariu and inspired by the tragic story of Mugur Călinescu. It was around 2012 when Radu Jude discovered this documentary play based on Mugur’s case file - the text is derived from the archives of Romania’s Communist-era secret police Securitate - and decided to use the piece as a jumping-off point. Far from innocuously filming the show, he proposes a reenactment, reactivating its apparatus by displacing it. The director combines images depicting the stylized aesthetics of the show (reminiscent of the brightly colored sets of televised game shows) with snippets of archival footage from Romanian TV of the era. Parties and picturesque scenes of everyday life often in praise of Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife are strewn about, offering a counterpoint to the implacable mechanics of the surveillance the teenager was subjected to. Here, official archives are interwoven with others to become pillars for constructing a theatrical narrative and tracing a history and its landscape. This dialectical montage creates an image of the sort of state-sanctioned propaganda that is the stock-in-trade of a coercive regime.
Caroline Châtelet
Journalist and critic
