A Film a Week - Bright Future / Viitor luminos

 previously published on Cineuropa

The abrupt fall of the long-lasting dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania seems to be a trendy topic in the realm of national cinema lately. Tudor Giurgiu dealt with it in his docudrama Freedom (2023) and Bogdan Mureşanu did so in his hyperlinked mosaic The New Year That Never Came (2024), while Vlad Petri also touched upon it in his documentary Between Revolutions (2023).

Producer-turned-filmmaker Andra MacMasters chose a different angle for her documentary and directorial debut, Bright Future, which could, for the most part, serve as a “prequel” of sorts to the aforementioned events. After its premiere at last year’s IDFA and a screening at this year’s edition of CPH:DOX, it is now playing in Beldocs’ The Battle for Reality section.

MacMasters opens the film with archival footage of Lenin’s monument being transported and placed on its pedestal in Bucharest, showcasing the conviction of Romanian communists and their dedication to the cause. She will come back home for the poignant ending, but in the meantime, the filmmaker takes us on a trip to Pyongyang, where the 13th edition of the World Youth and Student Festival took place. The large Romanian delegation had an especially honourable status there, owing to the “extraordinary friendship” between Ceauşescu and North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. It was the summer of 1989, and the collapse of the regime was just six months away.

The festival itself was organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students. For the latter, it was the last edition of the gathering: it would also be declared illegal later that year owing to its ties with communist regimes. The festival itself was not ideologically strict, as it brought together 20,000 people from left-leaning youth and student organisations from 177 countries, but the fact that it took place in the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen Square exposed the divisions between the delegations from the West and those from the communist countries. However, some topics they did have in common, and those topics are still present in the global left-wing discourse: the colonial past and neo-colonial present; the fight for human, women’s and gay rights; the fight against capitalism, imperialism and climate change; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and support for the oppressed.

The footage filmed by amateur filmmaker and educator Emilian Urse shows us the atmosphere of the festival: the theatrical ceremonies, the heated debates and the parties where we can witness oddities such as the whole hall singing and dancing to the Korean-language cover of the Modern Talking song “Brother Louie”. Through it, we can see the youthful, idealistic zeal and the high hopes for a “bright future”, as well as the political games that were being played on that level as well. Although we know that the end of the Cold War was near, the subjects remain completely unaware of it, despite some warning signs.

But in spite of the film containing some clandestinely obtained footage (the abundant use of fish-eye lenses is a dead giveaway), it is quite “creative” as a documentary. Most of its narrative material comes from printed sources, which vary from communist countries’ official press publications to Western press and archives, and it is read out by voice actors in a variety of languages off screen. It is deftly welded together by editor Andrei Gorgan, but it still remains very much Andra MacMasters’ work both in terms of the research and the overall finished product. On the surface, Bright Future might be about the past, but it challenges its viewers to reflect on their present and future.

A Film a Week - Home Sweet Home

 previously published on Cineuropa

Home films and video don’t lie. Why would they? They have been filmed without any artistic or filmmaking pretence, merely to record moments of life and happiness within the family circle. Or maybe they do lie? Because, artistic pretence or not, the amateur filmmaker or cinematographer at least selects what is and what is not to be shot on film or tape. So even if whatever we see is nothing but the truth, it certainly is not the whole truth.

German editor Annika Mayer chose to utilise Super 8 home movies for her feature-length directorial debut. Home Sweet Home has just premiered in the national documentary competition at DOK Leipzig and takes us behind the idyllic images of the happy life of a family in West Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The family in the Super 8 shots, initially in black and white, then in colour, is not just any family. The parents, Rolf and Rosa, are the filmmaker’s grandparents. Their eldest son Ernst is her father, while the younger Frank is her uncle. The happiness and the idyll in the films that they enjoy during leisure time, trips to the seaside or the mountains, and their sailing adventures might seem real and very much in accordance with the spirit of the times in West Germany, which back then was experiencing an economic boom after the war-time destruction; however, there is something off with one of the faces whose smile tends to look more like a spasm. That face belongs to Grandpa Rolf.

But Grandma Rosa is the one to tell us the story from “behind the scenes” that could not be further from the harmony shown by the home movies. The story she tells is horrific, as it entails terrible domestic abuse in a society that is completely unaware of it. Firstly, Rolf is 13 years older than Rosa, coming from an affluent family, and she was pressed by her own parents to drop out of school in order not to pass up a great marriage opportunity. Secondly, he is a war veteran who served in the Wehrmacht as a gunner, from Paris to Crimea, so he probably suffered from some kind of PTSD. Finally, he was not shy about showing his temperamental issues, even to his parents. Domestic violence is rarely monocausal, so with a patriarchal framework, probable trauma and various personality issues at play, it can get really ugly. Rolf’s reactions were unpredictable, and that coupled with alcohol abuse, a propensity for cheating and unresolved love-life issues made things escalate from regular beatings to more concrete, life-threatening behaviour.

Working with a limited quantity of source material (as is evident from some of the frames repeating themselves throughout the film, especially towards the end), Mayer introduces newly filmed interviews lensed by her co-producer and regular collaborator Jakob Krese, which actually gives Rosa more space to tell her story. The contrast between what we hear and what we see is stark, but also very logical in the wider context of things. Mayer’s own editing is methodical and rhythmic, keeping this concentrated experience to a fitting 67-minute running time. The other hero of the film is the score composer and sound designer, Gaston Ibarroule. His sound design gives another dimension to the doc in a very material way, while his atonal, distorted music comments on the imagery. In the end, Home Sweet Home is anything but sweet, but it is a strong wake-up call.