Friday Night Films at the Wende: Videograms of a Revolution

Videograms of a Revolution focuses on the December 1989 Romanian Revolution and reconstructs the five days of events from multiple real-time viewpoints. The film is compiled from over 125 hours of both official state broadcasts and amateur footage, filmed in both the state television studios and the streets of Bucharest. “If at the outbreak of the uprising only one camera dared to record,” said Farocki, “hundreds were in operation on the following day.”

Screened in conjunction with Watching Socialism: The Television Revolution in Eastern Europe, on view through October 20, 2019, the film offers a further investigation into ideas in the exhibition, and questions the relationship between power, history, and the televised image.

Harun Farocki (1944–2014) was a German filmmaker known for his fly-on-the-wall political-essay films. He made Videograms of a Revolution with co-director Andrei Ujică, a Romanian screenwriter, director, and founder of the ZKM Film Institute.