The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

Tyrant with a Movie Camera

by J. Hoberman – The New York Review of Books

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“Who knew that three hours of coarsely edited Romanian state propaganda culled from the ruinous Ceaucescu era between 1965 and 1989 could be so transfixing, illuminating and haunting? Andrei Ujicâ’s extraordinary film eschews context and narration in a wry attempt to fashion a historical chronicle in the same dubiously subjective spirit that the footage was initially conceived.”

(five stars out of five)

“Cinema’s propagandistic power is in full effect in Andrei Ujica’s montage epic, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, a contemporary fresco starring Romania’s fallen ruler and his wife, Elena. A radical and chilling project, the film concludes the filmmaker’s trilogy exploring the end of communism which began with the landmark Videograms for a Revolution, co-directed with German film essayist Harun Farocki. Autobiography defies categorization and functions closest to a Vertovian “film-object” wherein fragments of reality are edited together from an inventory of images in order to illustrate a higher truth. But what constitutes reality when its images have been stage-managed into baroque pageantry or quasi-Hollywood musicals by a delusional dictator?

Nicolae Ceausescu’s megalomania and self-aggrandizement are legendary. As Romania’s tyrannical President from 1974 to 1989, he created a bizarre and seemingly infectious cult of personality for himself. As Romania plunged into mass poverty under his draconian austerity programme and his banning of contraception (which caused widespread child abandonment, botched clandestine abortions and countless AIDS/HIV-infected orphans), Ceausescu continued to be fêted the world over. He was knighted by the Queen of England, visited by President Nixon (during the Cold War, no less) and was received warmly by Charles de Gaulle, Mao Tse-tung and most auspiciously by the North Koreans, whose welcoming ceremonies for him rivaled those of the Beijing Olympics.

Autobiography begins with the infamous television footage of the frail-looking Ceausescus in captivity undergoing a mock trial prior to their execution on Christmas Day. The film opens onto scenes of pomp and circumstance, chronicling Ceausescu’s twenty-five-year reign. Eschewing voice-over commentary, the film’s brilliant montage and subtle sound reconstruction create a sui generis film, lying somewhere between Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma and Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera.

Four years in the making and culled from one thousand hours of archival footage – both state sanctioned and private – this spellbinding adventure unfolds as if from the nostalgic, solipsistic memory of Ceausescu himself.”

“As sometimes happens, some of the finest movies in the festival are being presented outside the main event, including “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu.” Andrei Ujica opens this found-footage documentary with smeary color images of that former Romanian dictator shortly after his arrest in 1989 and then cuts to stark, silent, gripping black-and-white images, shot from on high, of thousands of people massing, surging and running in 1965, when Ceausescu’s predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, died. What follows are an astonishment of black-and-white and color visuals of Ceausescu at work and play through the decades — waving at workers, delivering speeches, sampling baked goods, driving a domestic car, meeting the queen of England — official images that helped sustain the lie of success he embodied.”

Andrei Ujica interview with Dennis Lim in The New York Times

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