Ten Minutes With the Working Class

Procreation is the social duty of all fertile women, was the political thinking during the 1960s and 1970s in Romania. In 1966, Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, in which he forbade abortion for all women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children. All forms of contraception were totally banned. The New Romanian Man was born. By 1969, the country had a million babies more than the previous average. Romanian society was rapidly changing. By using very interesting archival footage and excerpts from old fiction films and by interviewing famous personalities from that time – gynecologists or mothers who were part of the new society - the director revives this period of tremendous oppression of personal freedom. Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters, and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them.

The glorious and tragic story of American athlete and actor Johnny Weissmuller (1904-84), Olympic swimmer, water polo player and the only true Tarzan, an archetypal character and myth of cinema, that of the original Hollywood blockbusters (1932-48).

On Valentines Day, 1931, Universal Pictures released the film Dracula - the first true horror movie. Its worldwide success catapulted the film's lead actor, Romanian-born Bela Lugosi, to overnight stardom. "Bela Lugosi: The Fallen Vampire" traces the life and career of this mysterious man whose name became synonymous with the evil, yet magnetically compelling Count Dracula. Using archival still and film clips as well as interviews with film historians, actors and Lugosi himself, the special chronicles the meteoric rise and then precipitous decline of a talented yet tragic man who forever changed the face of horror films.

What happens when a documentary film breaks out of its comfort zone and openly provokes the society? To what extent my compatriots are willing to reflect on one particular episode, the reprisals in Odessa from October 1941?

Florin Iepan's unsettling film documents the famous case of a student who, due to the lack of light in the corridors of the Cișmigiu Hotel - a student dormitory at the time- and a malfunction of the elevator, fell into the elevator shaft and died. The camera, which flies over the exterior and interiors of the Cișmigiu Hotel with extraordinary mobility, suggesting an extracorporeal perspective, captures the desolate poverty the residents of the dormitory used to live in during the first years after the Revolution.