How American Movies and a Brave Translator Gave Hope to Oppressed Romanians

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:

Comments

[F. Stupidity, Jr.]

Obligatory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZV3365a7Ew

[jesse.in.mb]

I only beat you to this feel-good story by three days, Welch.

[GotOutOfCali]

Cool vid. I was lucky to spend a week in Bucharest. The way Romanians spoke about The Revolution gave this heartless monocled libertarian hope for the world. I think the last, officially recognized communist flag in the entire country flies in the basement of the People's Palace.

Oh, and shriek is an idiot.

[tarran]

That video brought a tear to my eye.

The collectivists are such fucking savages.

[jesse.in.mb]

I can't imagine not traveling freely, so the part where she talked about wanting to see the world and being stymied, which drove her into participating in the cinema black market, connected really strongly.

I really wish more people watched this. It's a great video.