alr

12:08 East of Bucharest
(A fost n-a fost?)

Screening on Film
Directed by Corneliu Porumboiu.
With Mircea Andreescu, Teodor Corban, Ion Sapdaru.
Romania, 2006, 35mm, color, 89 min.
Romanian with English subtitles.
Print source: Vitagraph Films

At 12:08 on December 22, 1989, the announcement of Ceausescu's deposition was made on Romanian national television ending years of communist rule. Sixteen years later, in an unnamed small town “somewhere east of Bucharest,” a producer at the impoverished local television channel organizes a talk show to commemorate the event in which locals discuss how they contributed to the revolution. The guests include Manescu, an alcoholic school-teacher and Piscoci, a lonely old-timer who jumps at the chance to join in, but mainly because he'd like some company. What follows, in this Cannes Camera d'Or-winning gem, is an absurdly comic farce in the best Eastern European tradition.

Part of film series

Read more

Seventh Annual New Films from Europe

Other film series with this film

Read more

Corneliu Porumboiu. Adjective

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

The Cold Heart is More Precious than Diamonds. The Cinema of Graham Greene

Read more

João César Monteiro, Poet-Provocateur

Read more

Marie Antoinette and Friends, Three Films by Sofia Coppola

Read more

Nostalgia, A Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque Program

Read more

The Human Condition

Read more

Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945 – 1960

Read more

Visions of a City, Or A Weekend in San Francisco

Read more

Once There Was History ... Andrzej Wajda at 100