film

The scenes of mass joy in Hungary at the (democratic) overthrow of the despicable Viktor Orban last weekend instantly had many commentators reaching for comparisons to 1989, and the fall of Communism across Eastern and Central Europe. What better time, then, to revisit one of the most dramatic and desperately needed revolutions of that era: the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania. Videograms of a Revolution is a gripping, formally inventive account of that extraordinary uprising, assembled entirely from television broadcasts and amateur footage.

Directed by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică and released in 1992, it reconstructs the fall of a particularly unhinged and brutal dictator not through retrospective narration but in the immediacy of images captured as events unfolded. The film charts how control of television became central to the revolution itself – protesters storm studios, presenters improvise, and power shifts live on air. As competing voices emerge, the screen becomes a contested space where history is both recorded and actively shaped.