The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

Andrei Ujica
,
RO
,
2010
,
35mm
,
colour
,
180'

“After all, a dictator is simply an artist who is able to fully put into practice his egotism. It is a mere question of aesthetic level, whether he turns out to be Baudelaire or Bolintineanu, Louis XVI or Nicolae Ceausescu.” (AU) 

“Serge Daney said that, with the birth of the Cinema – more than a century ago – any historical event also exists on film and this can be brought in as a witness (at first silent, than with sound ) of those events. Andrei Ujica takes one step further and says, in this astonishing Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu: the life on any historical character sufficiently filmed during his life can be reconstructed by putting together the footage of him that already exists. In other words, we can make a “fiction” film using real characters – a sort of Truman Show where Truman wouldn’t be the character played by Jim Carrey, but the American president with the same name. The Autobiography..., the last installment of the trilogy started with Videograms of a Revolution and continued with Out of the Present, is not a “documentary”, nor even a “docudrama”, but a “fiction” feature, with real, historical characters. Ujica didn’t shoot anything, because everything was already shot; he, pure and simply, edited the archive material “with Ceausescu” and reconstructed his historical adventure – an adventure which, because we’re dealing with a head of state, formed the very destiny of this state.” (Alex Leo Serban)