Investigarea trecutului prin filmul documentar: Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu de Andrei Ujică
Exploring History through the Documentary Film Based on Archival Footage: The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu by Andrei Ujică

Summary/Abstract: The documentary film represents a valuable tool for investigating history through its ability to present a selection of factual data in an attractive and accessible way, according to the requirements of an audiovisual narrative. By providing access to primary research sources, presented in a contextualized manner and arranged so as to build a narrative thread with an emotional impact, the documentary filmmaker must achieve a permanent balance between her personal approach and respecting the accuracy of factual data, thus accumulating responsibilities both of a journalist and of a historian, as theorist Bill Nichols observes. The present paper aims to analyze how the documentary film can facilitate historical and biographical exploration, focusing on the analysis of Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceaușescu / The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu by Andrei Ujică. The last part of a cinematic trilogy about the end of communism, this film released in 2010 uses exclusively archival footage to build a cinematic story that reflects the life of the communist leader. Hundreds of hours of footage from the National Film Archive and from Romanian Television were filtered in order to create an unconventional production, which covers Ceauşescu's political career, from the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, in 1965, to the Revolution in 1989. Without interviews, without explanations or off-screen comments, the images in which Ceauşescu appears at diplomatic meetings with international leaders, at rallies, public speeches or visits to factories "speak for themselves" and draw a complex portrait of the president executed in December 1989. But despite the apparent non-intrusive presence of the director Andrei Ujică and the editor Dana Bunescu, the selection, ranking and juxtaposition of the images give some clear directions to the interpretive approach.

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