Festival Program

December 8, 2009

16:00 Revolution Girls (Czech Republic, 2009, 70 min)

by Tatiána Marková and Nataša Dudinski (with English subtitles)

This is the story of four women who took part in the Velvet Revolution from Czechoslovakia and whose lives split on different paths after the students’ riots in 1989. One of them got into the European Parliament, while another became a successful writer.

17:20 We do not die (Romania, 2002, 30 min)

by Gabriel Burza (with English subtitles)

A touching account of the dramatic events that took place in Timisoara in December 1989, indicating a turning point in the history of the country. The film reveals the atmosphere of those days, dominated by fear but also by the audacity and the hope of the tens of thousands of people who got out into the streets, demanding their right to freedom and a better life.

18:00 Timişoara – December 1989 (Romania, 1993, 81 min.)

by Ovidiu Bose Paştina

December 17, 1989. Timişoara was bound to be erased from the map: “Shoot them in the legs.” They shot. “The Army is with us.” “Daddy, who shot mommy?” This is a touching testimonial film, in which victims, students, medical and military staff are brought to tell their story in front of the camera. The questions are countless, but how many answers are there?

20:00 Regime change in Hungary and in Eastern Europe 1988-1990 (Hungary, 2006, 116 min.)

by Márta Elbert (with English subtitles)

The author, in collaboration with the Hungarian national television employees, points out the main moments of the anticommunist fight in Hungary and the countries around it. The documentary is almost entirely built by stock footage from when the revolution was repressed in 1956 and Imre Nagy sentenced, up until when the Soviet troops left Hungary, in the spring of 1989.

December 9, 2009

16:00 Documentary photography exhibition: Post Revolution

by Liviu Tulbure

16:30 Videograms of a revolution (Germany, 1992, 107 min.)

by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică (with English subtitles)

Main Award at The Art of the Document Festival (17-30 Nov. 2009, Warsaw, Poland).
A visual chronicle of the Romanian revolution, made up exclusively from video shots took in December ’89. The intelligent editing, overlaps and metaphors create an extremely coherent and clear image of the events. It is a groundbreaking film which analyzes the relation between the political power and the mass media in Europe at the end of the communist era.

18:45 The truth will get you killed (Romania, 45 min.)

by Lucia Hossu Longin, producer: Dan Necşulea

A biography of Iosif (Bebe) Costinaş, who disappeared from Timisoara around the 2nd and 8th of June 2002 for reasons unknown to this date. Following a personal investigation, he sketched the ruthless picture of repression, searching for those responsible for the murders in December 1989. He was known as an exceptionally trenchant journalist and witness at those events, considered by many as extremely uncomfortable. The film retraces the causes that led to Bebe Costinaş’ disappearance.

20:00 How we torn down the iron curtain (Poland, 2005, 62 min.)

by Kystyna Mokrosińska (with English subtitles)

A complex perspective on recent Polish history, focusing on the role played by the Solidarity movement and by the Catholic church in the fall of the communist regime.