Screening of 'The Last Days of the Ceauşescus'

Milo Rau's film 'The Last Days of the Ceausescus' will be screened at the 3rd Fanatika International Theatre Documentary Festival, 2014.

Pro Helvetia presents 'The Last Days of the Ceauşescus' for the 3rd edition of Fanatika International Theatre Documentary Festival in February 2014.

The Last Days of the Ceauşescu's 
Written by Milo Rau 
Directed by Milo Rau and Marcel Bächtiger 
A Production of IIPM - International Institute of Political Murder 
Romanian (English subtitles), colour, Digi Beta/HD, 72 min

Ahmedabad February 07, 08 & 09
Vadodara February 14, 15 & 16

For updated schedule visit: fanatika.in/fitd-festival/
Partner: Fanatika International Theatre Documentary Festival, Alliance Fran aise d'Ahmedabad and Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council

The images of the condemnation and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena on Christmas Day in 1989 are etched deeply in the collective unconscious of several generations of television viewers. Exactly 20 years after its occurrence, the famous show trial was re-enacted in a historically reproduced setting. The film interweaves the stage production with interviews conducted with eyewitnesses and archive material and takes a look backstage in the Odeon Theater in Bucharest.

In 2009, The Last Days of the Ceauşescu's enriched the German-language theatre with a new political format: reenactment - the artistic reconstruction of real historic events, a technique that had been fashionable in the visual arts for a long time. Milo Rau collaborated with his fellow director Simone Eisenring to translate the methodology of 'reenactment' effectively onto the stage. Basing the play on an original video recording, Rau reenacted the trial of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena on Christmas Day 1989. The piece sparked considerable controversy. Although some critics recognised the artist's immense potential as an innovator, others appeared to be uneasy at the work's aesthetic realism, a mode that was particularly unusual on the independent theatre scene. At a fundamental level, some commentators asked themselves what was to be gained from a performance if it purportedly did nothing more than reproduce a trial that had been documented on film as faithfully to the original as possible.