Here’s a moving little documentary about how VHS machines, a
shadowy entrepreneur, and a ubiquitous voice-over translator gave
the oppressed, audio-visually starved Romanians living under
Ceausescu a little dynamic glimpse of what freedom might look
like:
Director Ilinka Calugareanu adds some thoughts
here. Link via the Twitter feed of Kmele
Foster.
I wrote about the integral role of movies and culture in
Romanian politics (both before and after Ceausescu) in this
2005 Reason piece, which details how the show Dallas
was miraculously smuggled into the dictator’s shrinking TV
schedule. For more on J.R.’s liberatory role, watch this Reason.tv
vid:
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