Dupa Revoluţiei (After the Revolution)

A week or two ago we finally found the time to sit and watch Dupa Revolutiei, a film by Laurentiu Calciu that captures the mood on Bucharest’s streets in the immediate aftermath of 1989′s revolution.

The film very loosely tells the story of the first six months of 1990, from the announcement on February 6 by the National Salvation Front (FSN) that it would field candidates in presidential and parliamentary elections (having initially said, in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, that it would stay out of politics) to the mineriada of June 13-15, when brutal miners from the Jiu Valley violently put down student protests against the FSN government.

Though touted as a documentary, we would call this more document than documentary per se. An endlessly fascinating, intriguing, disturbing and genuinely unique document. The footage of the public arguments taking place in Piata Universitatii the day after opposition supporters had organised the first major protest against the FSN is priceless. It shows how the country was split in two: between naive, scared people who believed in the ‘nu vindem tara‘ nonsense that the FSN was spouting at the time, and more progressive revolutionaries who actually wanted to take the country forward.

Having less than a month beforehand been citizens in the most dictatorial regime in Europe, it is incredible to hear people say things like ‘no other parties except the FSN should be allowed,’ or ‘if there has to be some opposition, the people who come back from abroad shouldn’t be allowed in it.’

‘The people from abroad’ were, specifically, Ion Ratiu and Radu Campeanu, who are accused of ‘not having protested like us against communism.’ Both stood in the presidential election of May 1990 against Ion Iliescu.

Here ignorance plays its part: Ratiu in fact protested more than most against Romanian communism, and did so for decades. He was arrested a number of times, most famously outside Claridges, in London, in 1978, where inside that famous hotel Nicolae Ceausescu was hosting a banquet for HM Queen Elizabeth II. In turn, Campeanu spent years in Romania’s gulag, before being exiled to Paris.

Two further things will strike you watching the film:

1. Ion Iliescu (at the time the leader of the FSN) is an arrogant man (like you didn’t know that already). The press conference at which he defends the FSN’s decision to field candidates in the elections is a masterclass in batting away difficult questions with a smile.

2. The elections of 1990 (both parliamentary and presidential) were marked by the kind of irregular activities usually the preserve of places like Zimbabwe and Belarus. The report delivered by the head of the foreign observers at the end of the film is not just damning, it’s shocking. The observer delivering the report (whose name escaped us) is clearly astonished at what has gone on.

Too much of the content of this film has been forgotten, which is why we can’t help but recommend it. Even if this kind of footage exists elsewhere, we doubt anyone will ever broadcast it.

You can buy a copy of Dupa Revolutiei here, at the film’s website.

Watch the trailer here.

PS: There is a marvelous diversion midway through the film: a scene in the foreign press centre, when we get to see Chris Walker, of The Times, phone in his hand-written report for the next day’s paper (in the days when journalists actually had to work for a living – well, a little). Another journo is seen using a typewriter, yet another a telex machine. Remember those?

Tagged as: Dupa Revolutiei, Films about Romania, FIlms about Romanian Revolution, Laurentiu Calciu, Romanian Revolution, Rupert Wolfe-Murray