Uppercase Print

Based on a true story. Romania, 1981: Ceaușescu is in office, leading a communist Romania. He writes the official story with the help of the National Television. Mugur Călinescu, a 16 y.o. teenager, writes another story on walls with chalked uppercase protest messages against the regime. His actions are compiled in a voluminous file kept by the Secret Police (Securitate), which observed, apprehended, interrogated and destroyed him. Linking both stories - secret and public - personal and collective - brings to light an unknown hero 30 years after the fall of communism. "§What’s most fascinating—and even more disturbing—in Jude’s selection of clips are the ones that do a remarkable job of simulating the ideals and values of an open society. Musical-variety numbers blend folkloric pop in the Lawrence Welk vein with elaborate Busby Berkeley-esque video manipulations, or feature a truly chilling call by a rock-like singer for adults to return to childhood. News reports range from the blandly cheerful (the increased production of new-model refrigerators) to the brazenly propagandist (Western Europe depicted as being in the iron grips of Nazism and awaiting a chance to invade Romania), from the trivial (the displacement of a garden by a merry-go-round) to the obliviously oppressive—notably, a sort of authoritarian “Candid Camera,” in which drivers caught honking, a crime, are secretly recorded by police officers who interrogate them on film." (The New Yorker)