Videograms of a Revolution (1992) User Reviews

wow

[auweia1 · 9/10 · 5 May 2006]

We didn't get too much on the news here in San Francisco when this happened in 1989, just some general snippets. We knew in general what had happened, that there was a coup, that Nicolae Ceausescu was executed, etc, but not many people here really knew what happened. There was a lot of confusion, misinformation and general lack of any in depth coverage as to what was really happening at the time. National Public Radio provided the most in depth coverage, but even they didn't quite get the whole thing when it was actually happening. Mostly likely because of things like media blackouts, competing propaganda, etc. This movie shows far more than anything I ever saw reported here. This has just been released by Facets video and I was able to rent it on DVD via Netflix.

Americans might dismiss this sort of thing as old Soviet era cold war communist events that could only happen then and in those places, and while nothing comes close to this sort of revolution in the West, there are hints of that here, and that is scary. The basic issues of who controls the media are still there in both cases, omnipresent police at demonstrations, tanks in the street, like Los Angeles last year, the ignorance of the elite and refusal to recognize the common peoples problems, lies, counter lies, allegiances and loyalty, the military allegiance to > the people or the president?....Does the recent US military (retired) generals criticism of Donald Rumsfeld ring a bell?

Yep, it's pretty complicated stuff folks,and this film shows it all.It should be required viewing for all young people everywhere. Why? Because it serves as a reminder of what can happen when too many people become unhappy. It reminds people of how delicate many situations are around the world, even today. How easily a situation can deteriorate unless leaders are mighty careful.

I'm online in some discussion groups with people in Romania and nearby Slovenia and surrounding countries. In many areas, much of this was carried live in the region, but not everything. As the films shows, there were media blackouts. That's true indeed.

This will take some time, but I believe that the subtitles made for the DVD are not quite complete....We think they can be improved to get a better understanding. I'm working with my Romanian friends who do remember this and do know English to maybe eventually send Facets video a nice time stamped text file. Maybe they can release an updated second edition. After all, it should be the Romanians themselves who see this documentary and help the world better understand what happened via the English text/subtitles or any other language. It's their history, and by extension, everybody's history.

also, none of my friends in Romania recognize this video as being widely available there. We're working on getting them a copy.

Outstanding documentary, I give it a 9.0

Mostly it's because this documentary shows,like no other I have seen, how a huge number of people can turn, on the edge of a pin

Jeff Webb, San Francisco May 5, 2006

"It Can't Happen Here" - Frank Zappa 1966

Particularly liked the "Easter-egg" at the start of the documentary.

[radumurariu · 9/10 · 28 August 2020]

The Documentary shows rare footage from the events that transpired in the regime change of '89. I particularly found it interesting how blatantly the injured woman read from the notepad the suit-man was flipping. It can be seen in the shadow on the pillow. This gives a unique insight in the propagandistic aspect of a regime change.

a change is gonna come

[lee_eisenberg · 8/10 · 11 November 2022]

The world's attention was focused on two countries in December, 1989: Panama (invaded by the US) and Romania, where a popular revolution overthrew longtime despot Nicolae Ceausescu. But what happened on the ground? Harun Farocki's "Videogramme einer Revolution" ("Videograms of a Revolution" in English) tries to make sense of the events from the 20th to the 25th of December. Part of what it shows is how the Romanians themselves often didn't know the full extent of what was happening, especially since Ceausescu still had control of his country's media. It makes one wonder how things would play out if this happened (or had happened) in a western bloc country.

The thing to understand about Ceausescu was that unlike the rest of the leaders in the Soviet bloc - who were typical puppets of the USSR - he ran Romania like his own personal piggy bank and forced women to have large numbers of children. No surprise that the people eventually brought him down and executed him. We can debate how things turned out in Romania afterwards, but there's no denying that Ceausescu was a real whack-job. Check out the documentary if you can find it.

Note: The first S in his name had a cedilla, but IMDb no longer allows that letter for some reason.

Documentary that observes the fall of the Ceausescu regime from the inside.

[kellyh1 · 10/10 · 27 September 2005]

This film shows the Romanian revolt against the Ceausescu regime and the occupation of the national television studios by the people of the country. It contains actual inside footage and replays of the broadcasts made by the leaders of the revolt. One of the most important aspects of the film is the importance that television and video played in the success of the revolution. I was a student of Mr. Farocki for a semester in 2002, and feel that a review by me would be unfairly biased. So, if anyone else has seen it, please submit your review. Two other documentaries I have seen by Mr. Farocki that stand out in my mind would be Images of the World and the Inscription of War, also, What we See (Wie man Sieht, I think).

Turbulent times in Romanian history

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 19 September 2016]

"Videogramme einer Revolution" or "Videogram of a Revolution" is a co-production between German and Romania and this film was made back in 1992, which means next year it will have its 25th anniversary. The duo who wrote this and directed it too were Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica. Ujica is certainly now known today (anymore) to people outside Romania or here in Germany in particular, but he brings the connection to the contents of this film and without him this never would have been made. Farocki, however, is known here in Germany because of his many works in the last decades, even if he is certainly not as much of a household name either like Christian Petzold for example with whom he worked on several movies. This film is a first-hand recording of the tumultuous events in the late 1980s in Germany when violent dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were overthrown and executed by the Romanian people and the Romanian Army. Everything you see and hear during these 105 minutes is video and audio footage from back then. You see the people riot in the streets, under the balcony, you see television news coverage and what happened during these shows in the face of this revolution and of course there are also many interviews in here, mostly with normal people like you and me from the streets and how they saw it all. And you see how some of the bad guys (from the Ceausescus posse, his longtime helpers) are arrested and the police officers have difficulties to control their aggressions against this regime. This is basically all what this film is about and you need to decide for yourself if this sounds appealing enough to sit through this for 100 minutes and longer. I myself think this was a decent watch. It may have been slightly shorter, but as a whole it is still a really convincing and important achievement and for Romanians I would even call it close to a must-see. Everybody else needs to decide if the end of the Cold War era and the country this is about in particular is interesting enough for them to check this one out. I give it a thumbs-up.

Amateur video footage best accompanied by an encyclopedia article.

[Zoomorph · 2/10 · 23 March 2015]

This documentary consists solely of amateur and TV crew video footage spanning the few days of the Romanian Revolution. Not knowing anything about the revolution beforehand, I found it very difficult to piece together who everyone was and what was happening on the screen. Reading the wikipedia article on the revolution afterwards was very insightful.

The editing of the footage is just OK. Some footage is shown multiple times for no apparent reason, the pace drags at parts, and the ending is anti-climactic.

There is a female narration which is thankfully very sparse, because she has nothing intelligent to say. A few times she states the obvious about what the camera man is doing, and the remainder of her lines are pseudo-philosophical gibberish that feels out of place.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they have a particular interest in the Romanian Revolution, and even then only as supplementary material. Nowadays, anyone who has seen modern protests on YouTube is likely to have seen more interesting footage.

Nice work gathering the footage

[ersbel · 5 October 2020]

Overall the documentary is weak. But it does a nice job gathering all the footage. Instead of digging in YouTube, one has many of the videos in here.

The voice over is bad. It lacks the insides needed by someone who is not familiar with the episode. It also spells too much for someone who is.

I see it was made back in 1992. So there was no clear direction in which the governmental machine was going, hence the footage is rather aimless. I'm pretty sure that the same production team would give a far different edit in 2022.

So I will give the documentary extra stars. But the value rests with the tapes and not the people who have curated the documentary. In 2020 it's a nice thing to see Anarchy existed in the 20th century. A couple of decades later, in *Bucharest, Where Are You?* one can see the repressive apparatus is functional and nothing like 1989 could happen, the republican slaves unwilling to fight have been replaced with professional thugs that will not hesitate to kill in order to pay their mortgage.