Hotel Dallas

Dir. Sherng-Lee Huang and Livia Ungur, USA/Romania, 2016, 74 min.

In conjunction with the exhibition Watching Socialism: the Television Revolution in Eastern Europe, the Wende Museum presents Hotel Dallas.

Playfully mixing fiction and documentary, Hotel Dallas is a surreal parable of communism, capitalism, and the power of art. In the 1980s, Dallas is the most popular TV show in communist Romania. Presented as a cautionary tale about Western greed, the show’s vision of wealth and glamour enthralls the struggling populace—including Ilie and his daughter Livia. He is a small-time criminal and aspiring capitalist; she is in love with the show’s handsome leading man, Patrick Duffy. After communism falls, Ilie builds the Hotel Dallas, a life-size copy of the Dallas mansion. Livia immigrates to America, becomes an artist, and directs a film starring Patrick Duffy as a soap opera character who dies in Texas and wakes up in Romania, in a hotel that looks just like home.