"The Romanian revolution was for me, my own personal revolution. It brought me – to use Andy Warhol’s expression - my ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ for it catapulted me and Romanian studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, into the British public eye. This lecture is based on my experience of the 1989 revolution as a consultant to the BBC at the time, an experience that included visual and audio monitoring of events in Romania in London between 14 December 1989 and 10 January 1990.

As 'anchor' in London I had access to the reports from the major international news agencies as they came through to the BBC on a teleprinter, as well as to television 'feeds' from camera crews from thirty-six international TV companies dispersed around Romania. Among them were stations from the USSR, Libya, France, West Germany, Hungary, and Britain. I was thus indirect witness to the meetings convoked on 22 December in the central squares of the cities and major towns of Romania – Bucharest, Timișoara, Pitești, Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Arad, Bacău, Constanța, Suceava - ostensibly to show support for Ceaușescu, and to filmed events that followed.

After arriving in Bucharest on 31 December, I accompanied three teams of BBC reporters and cameramen throughout the city, translating interviews carried out by the team with Ion Iliescu, Silviu Brucan, Ion Caramitru, Mircea Dinescu, and many other significant actors in the aftermath of Ceaușescu’s overthrow. The latter included a one-to-one meeting with General Victor Stanculescu. My reflections are based in part on this direct contact."

Ivan Semciuc (played by Florin Piersic Jr.) is a cynical investigative journalist. He is skillfully combining truth and fiction in his reports. Then comes a day when something similar occurs in his own life: at the end of a mission in Kabul, he has a one night stand with Ioana, the translator. The event is seemingly meaningless, but the next day, back to Bucharest, Ivan finds out that Ioana died with her wrists cut. The unshakable routine of his personal life enters a profound revolution, as Ioana is haunting him, more present in her death then she was during life. The film is raising questions about truth, love and the price we decide to pay for them. Winner of The Best Director Warsaw International Film Festival 2018.

These shorts were made by Romanian American students during ARCS Summer Camp (2nd edition) hosted by Ellison Center at University of Washington, under the instruction of director Iulia Rugină and actress Ioana Flora. Every group received a prompt for their short, related to four Romanian role models: Nadia Comăneci, Queen Marie, George Enescu and Constantin Brâncusi. Making of by Adriana Guiman.

This multi award-winning documentary tells us the story of Toto (10) and his sisters Ana (17) and Andreea (15) who conquer life on their own during their mother's imprisonment. Toto passionately learns dancing, reading and writing, while his sisters try to keep the family together in a world that has long forgotten what the innocence of childhood should be. What happens when we discover that we can get more from life than our parents have to offer?

Toto Horvat’s story tells us about the importance of art and education in shaping the future generations and empowering our youth to be change makers, against all odds. Toto came to Seattle for the 2^ndedition of ARCS Summer Camp for Romanian heritage students, hosted on UW Campus. His internship was sponsored by the UiPath Foundation, whose executive director Raluca Negulescu-Balaci will attend the screening and Q& A session to lead a debate about inspiring models of social change. 

Panelists: Akila Somasegar (Philantropist, GirlUp, Seattle); Magda Matache (Instructor and Director of the Roma Program, Harvard University), Cristiana Grigore (Founder Roma Peoples Project, Columbia University), Raluca Negulescu-Balaci (Executive Director, UiPath Foundation); and Pulitzer Prize winner for journalism Jacqui Banaszynsk.

The debate will follow the screening of the social documentary Toto and his sisters (dir Alexandru Nanau) and aims to shed light on the unseen potential of children struggling with inequality, as well as the challenges they encounter navigating social stigma and economic marginalization. We will explore and share a significant number of perspectives and impactful ways that can tackle poverty for children around the world, with a focus on Romania, India and the US. Looking at the accelerated pace of change of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we will discuss the role of technology in empowering underprivileged children to become agents of social progress and advancement.

About UiPath Foundation 

Founded by UiPath in January 2019, UiPath Foundation is an independent non-governmental, non-profit, non-political and non-religious organization, that aims to empower underprivileged children to reach their potential and thrive together with their communities through equal access to education. 

More details: https://www.uipath.com/company/foundation

A day after Valentina’s passing, her bereaved husband Vassil and son Pavel discover that she persistently keeps trying to call the neighbor on the phone. A sucker for the supernatural, Vassil sets out on a trip to meet a famous medium, forcing his estranged son Pavel to tag along and make sure his nutty old dad stays out of harm’s way. The unhinged journey that follows helps them face the guilt they feel towards the one they have lost, and rediscover their relationship to each other. Winner of the Crystal Globe, Karlovy Vary Czech Film Festival, 2019.

We all wrestle with our past. Some more than others. Romanian Jewish avant-garde poet, musician, visual artist, femme fatale, prodigious drinker and terminal smoker Nina Cassian had more than most to wrestle with: her refuge in the Communist underground during the Fascist 1940s put her first in complicit proximity to the Stalinist regime of the 1950s, then propelled her on a collision course with the Ceaușescu regime in the 1970s, and eventually sent her into an unwanted New York exile in 1985, when her samizdat poems led to a secret police murder. An intensely personal film about art, belief, and politics, The Distance Between Me and Me looks at the friction between individual memory and official archives, between our present reality and the narratives we construct about our former selves by setting Nina’s words during her last year of life against a rich archive of films, music, poems, official television appearances, never-before-seen private recordings, and secret police surveillance materials.

In THE WHISTLERS, not everything is as it seems for Cristi, a police inspector in Bucharest who plays both sides of the law. Embarking with the beautiful Gilda on a high-stakes heist, both will have to navigate the twists and turns of corruption, treachery and deception. A trip to the Canary Islands to learn a secret whistling language might just be what they need to pull it off.

The film was nominated for Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019, and is Romania’s proposal for the 2020 Oscars. 

The turbulent year of 1968 and the “Prague Spring” set the scene for the moving story of this film. A Romanian German family living in the heart of Transylvania starts a journey to the German Democratic Republic. Two brothers with very different personalities take their weary father to have surgery abroad, which they hope would help restore the family’s lost harmony. Caught in the middle of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and closed in by the Soviet tanks, the men suddenly find themselves in West-Germany. How much sacrifice can they take until they can return back home to the rest of their family? Winner of 8 international prizes, including Federico Fellini Award, Tiburon International Film Festival, 2017. 

In the Donbass, a region of Eastern Ukraine, a hybrid war takes place, involving an open armed conflict alongside killings and robberies on a mass scale perpetrated by separatist gangs. War is called peace, propaganda is uttered as truth, and hatred is declared to be love. A journey through the region unfolds as a chain of curious adventures, where the grotesque and dramatic are as intertwined as life and death. This is not a tale of one region, one country, or one political system. It is about a world lost in post-truth and fake identities. It is about each and every one of us. Winner of 9 international prizes, including Un Certain Regard, Cannes, 2018.

Romania, 1984. The decision of a mathematician to publish a paper in a journal of an American university, without asking the permission of the communist authorities, will trigger a chain of events that will change the lives of those around him. After all, there are no decisions without consequences. Florin Piersic Jr. plays the Securitate detective who investigates the case. He received the Best Actor of the Year (Gopo Awards) for his brilliant interpretation. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Rome Film Fest in 2013.

On the 20th of December, 1989, a few days after Ceausescu's bloody repression in Timisoara, a father’s quiet evening turns to sheer ordeal as he finds out that his young son has mailed a wish list to Santa requesting a present for his father -- his desire to see Ceausescu dead. Winner of numerous prizes, including Best of Fest & Jury Award, Palm Springs International ShortFest, 2019, and Grand Prix, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, 2019.

Performed by one of Romania’s most prominent and prolific young actors, Freak Show brings to life characters depicting the tragi-comic transition from communism to democracy. EVENT IN ROMANIAN.

Freak Show, written, directed and performed by Florin Piersic Jr, is a dynamic tour de force that keeps the audience with bated breath for almost two hours. Florin Piersic Jr plays 13 characters (a fake billionaire, worker, banker, retiree, TV producer, professor, beggar, among others). You will watch a versatile actor who continuously changes parts in a hallucinatory chain of transformations.

Adrian is a poet, a Romanian immigrant working as night guard at a car dealership in Cordoba.He speaks Spanish, he lives utterly alone and all he wants is to write and start a new life. His encounter with Maria, during the Night of San Juan, seems written in the stars. Their passion, oblivious of anyone and anything, will soon be tested by the challenges they must face together. Love and literature will save Adrian.

This film was presented at the Romanian Film Festival in 2019.