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Eight Postcards from Utopia

Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz
Romania
71’

Eight Postcards from Utopia is a found-footage documentary assembled exclusively out of post-socialist Romanian advertisements. In bringing together these documents of Romania’s long transition period, they are made to speak about life, love and death, about the body and human frailty, about nature and the supernatural, about recent history, and, of course, about socialism and capitalism. A film between found poetry and an outdated encyclopaedia, between trash art and Summa theologiae.

Eight Postcards from Utopia gives off the feeling of a message in a bottle, put away and labeled “DO NOT OPEN BEFORE 2024”. Radu Jude and Christian Ferencz-Flatz uncover a stream of images buried deep within the collective memory of the transition period, images that, beyond their original, mercantile purpose, bore witness to the mad rush of mid-’90s privatizations, the disillusionment of the revolution, the birth of savage capitalism. Notwithstanding, throughout all this imagery, one can grasp the Zeitgeist of a certain golden age of Romanian advertising in the mid-2000s. At the same time, The Postcards are also a confirmation of a particular hypothesis: there can be no Radu Jude film without actor Șerban Pavlu, even if someone else is filming him. (Flavia Dima)

Screening date and location

September 28th, 9:00 PM, Cinema Elvire Popesco

Tickets

Awards & Festivals

Radu Jude

Radu Jude is a director and screenwriter. Several of his films, including Aferim! (2015), I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018), and Uppercase Print (2020), won multiple awards worldwide. In 2021, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. His latest feature, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023), won the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

Christian Ferencz-Flatz

Christian Ferencz-Flatz is a philosopher, affiliated with the Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy in Bucharest. His research concerns phenomenology, critical theory, the philosophy of history as well as film and media philosophy. He has published numerous essays and research articles and translated into Romanian key theoretical works by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Siegfried Kracauer.

  • Technical sheet
  • Production and distribution
  • Directors: Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz
  • Screenplay: Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz
  • Editing: Cătălin Cristuțiu
  • Sound: Ștefan Ruxandra
  • Sound mixing: Alexandru Dumitru
  • Produced by: Saga Film
  • Producer: Alexandru Teodorescu

Special Screenings

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Opening Film: TWST – Things We Said Today

Andrei Ujică | Duration 86’

A time capsule of New York City between August 13-15, 1965, framed by the Beatles’ arrival in the city and their first concert at Shea Stadium, all narrated from two teenagers' points of view.

Merman

Ana Lungu | Duration 85’

A female voice is haunting a male gaze. An archival documentary about three men making images of women, in Romania, from WWII until the Revolution: an engineer filming his daughter, a music professor documenting his family and an aristocrat capturing the summer spent with his wife during wartime.

A Fidai Film

r. Kamal Aljafari | Duration 78’

In the summer of 1982 the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Taking this as a premise, A Fidai Film explores the visual memory of this looting and appropriates images now in the hands of Israeli archives.

Eight Postcards from Utopia

Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz | Duration 71’

Eight Postcards from Utopia is a found-footage documentary assembled exclusively out of post-socialist Romanian advertisements. In bringing together these documents of Romania’s long transition period, they are made to speak about life, love and death, about the body and human frailty, about nature and the supernatural, about recent history, and, of course, about socialism and capitalism. A film between found poetry and an outdated encyclopaedia, between trash art and Summa theologiae.

Closing film: It’s Not Me

Leos Carax | Duration 41’

For an exhibition that in the end never took place, the Pompidou Museum asked the filmmaker to reply, in pictures, to the question : Where are you at, Leos Carax? He attempts an answer – full of questions. About himself and “his” world: I don’t know, but if I did, I’d reply that…
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