Corps de femmes et maisons d’enfants dans Enfants du diable de Liliana Lazăr

Women Bodies and Children’s Homes in Liliana Lazar’s Enfants du diable [The Devil’s Children]. Many contemporary Romanian writers who chose French as a literary language seem to share a common interest in revisiting through fiction Romania’s relatively recent communist past, thus exposing the dysfunctionalities of the ‘multilaterally developed socialist society’ during the last years of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship. In her novel, Enfants du diable (2016), Liliana Lazar’s merit is to emphasize the abusive nature of the Romanian totalitarian regime by exploring a topic which is normally less taken into account by post-communist Romanian fiction, namely the private body of women transformed into a public, even political body after the implementation of the Anti-abortion Decree 770/1966. Our aim is to examine the way in which Lazar’s book deals with this topic and its social and personal consequences, as well as its denunciation of a less evident form of the communist carceral system, namely the institutionalization of orphaned children. Keywords: communism, totalitarian regime, women’s body, orphanage, carceral system, Liliana Lazar, Nicolae Ceaușescu

“Porque a Criança Cozinha na Polenta”: Aglaja Veteranyi na adaptação da Cia. Teatral Mungunzá

Este artigo buscou observar a adoção de recursos multimodais na construção dramatúrgica de “Porque a Criança Cozinha na Polenta“, dirigido por Nelson Baskerville. Trata-se da adaptação para a teatro do romance autobiográfico de Aglaja Veteranyi, escritora, diretora e atriz romena que fugira para a Europa ocidental com a família durante a ditadura de Nicolae Ceausescu. A partir de análise multimodal, com exemplos comentados por Mondada e Lehmann como a noção de densidade modal e o uso de multimídia no teatro pós dramático, investiguei as escolhas estéticas da encenação. Considerei a importância da recepção como elemento de efetivação da questão fenomenológica, pois a relação com o público é elemento fundante da poética teatral contemporânea.

The Power and The Truth. A Film. A National Project

"This article tries to understand what type of film is approved by the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime and how it is promoted, through various propaganda channels. In this sense, we choose to discuss the film made by the artistic couple Manole Marcus - Titus Popovici, The Power and The Truth (1972), and we resort to a content analysis to understand the way it was made. We are also interested in the echoes of the film in the press of the time and how with the help of newspaper articles the authorities inoculate the idea that this film is the most important cinematographic achievement of the moment, a benchmark for political productions to be made from that point on. Keywords: Cinematography, Political Film, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Manole Marcus, Titus Popovici, Propaganda "

Lekcja realizmu

In April 1978 Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu visited the United States. He met with his counterpart Jimmy Carter and discussed current bilateral and multilateral issues. Romanian agenda for that visit was to strengthen the country’s independence in the Soviet Bloc and to increase the international recognition of its leader. US agenda was to diversify the Soviet Bloc and to influence Romanian leadership to orient its internal policy towards respecting the human rights.This point was not reached. US achieved only the goals that could be described as belonging to “political realism”. Ceaușescu was not open for any idealistic principles and avoided the human rights topics. It was the last visit in the US of any leader of the Soviet Bloc countries before Gorbachev came to power.

La libertad de información en Rumanía durante la guerra fría

Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej inauguró en 1947 como líder del Partido Comunista Rumano (PCR) la Guerra Fría en Rumanía. Una oscura era de terror y represión, con diversos altibajos, que estaría presente durante más de cuatro décadas: tanto bajo su mandato (hasta su muerte en 1965), como bajo el de su sucesor, Nicolae Ceaușescu (1965-1989).

Revoluție și competențe literate: România postcomunistă

This is a modified version of the introduction to a chapter from my PhD thesis concerning publishing and reading practices during XX-th century Romania. The present excerpt delineates the social and cultural context in the first decade after the Revolution that toppled the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu at the end of 1989. With a focus on the notion of literacy, I explore how the changes in the material and social landscape produced lingering effects in book consumption and reading practices.

Dyplomacja Nicolae Ceauşescu wobec przemian politycznych w Polsce w 1989 roku

Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Diplomacy in the Face of Political Changes in Poland in 1989 In 1989, Romania belonged to the communist countries, which particularly strongly attacked communist Poland for carrying out democratic reforms. For many months the diplomacy of communist leader Nicolae Ceaşescu tried to organize a conference of socialist countries on the subject of Poland, but as a result of Moscow’s opposition it did not come to fruition. During the Gorbachev era, the Soviet Union rejected the Brezhnev doctrine, while Romania actually urged its restoration. This was in contradiction with the current political line of Ceauşescu in favor of not interfering in the internal affairs of socialist countries. However, in 1989 it was a threat to communism, which is why historians also have polemics about Romanian suggestions for the armed intervention of the Warsaw Pact in Poland. In turn, Romania did not allow Poland to interfere in the problems of the Polish minority in Bukovina.

The Romanian National Television as part of the communist propaganda apparatus during the 1970s

To legitimize its actions and to control the population, the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) worked constantly to impose its vision, with the propaganda apparatus acting intensely during both the period of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, as well as during the reign of his successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu. From its establishment in 1956, the Romanian National Television (TVR) had been one of the instruments through which the voice of the communist authorities had been heard, both literally and figuratively. In this study I investigate the evolution of TVR as a propaganda tool of the communist regime during the 1970s, with a focus on the evolution of the propaganda programmes and on the main requirements of the Party. For this purpose, I used sources from the Romanian National Archives and the Archives of the Romanian Broadcasting Society, and I analysed the measures that PCR took in relation to TVR so that the latter meets the ideological expectations of the communist regime.

Między minimalizmem a melodramatem. Przestrzeń filmowa w kinie rumuńskiej nowej fali

The starting point for considering the means of creating and designing a film space in Romanian New Wave cinema is the thesis that Romanian film art in the 21st century is an artistic response to the times of communism and that images of the post-socialist architectural space – their multi-faceted functionalization in film mise-en-scéne – are the key method of evoking memories of the past. The article discusses, via the example of movies by Crisitian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristi Puiu, (1) ways of depicting the “closing” of film characters in the cramped interiors of their apartments and (2) film images of individuals’ alienation in public spaces, both of them allusively referring to the times of the oppressive Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. The most important cinematographic devices used bythe authors of the Romanian New Wave cinema include: seemingly static shots, which, however, are filmed with a camera that is constantly gently moving and observing, and tableau shots. A common feature of all the considered works is the panopticism of the film world: the private and public spaces designed in them easily become a place of constant, panoptical observation. In the summary, theauthor remarks on and briefly discusses the coexistence of the aesthetics of minimalism / realism with the melodramatic elements in the cinematic structure of Romanian New Wave films.