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‘Eight Postcards From Utopia’ Review: Advertising Tells (and Sells) All in Radu Jude’s Playful Post-Socialist History of Romania
Rudu Jude's 'Eight Postcards From Utopia' sees him teaming with philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz for a uniquely revealing documentary.
Assembled wholly from a vast archive of post-Revolution Romanian TV ads, Radu Jude and Christian Ferencz-Flatz’s witty, chaotic documentary carves out a tumultuous 30-year-plus history of a country transitioning from socialism to capitalism — all via the ways in which everything from beer to laundry detergent to banking is pitched to the viewing public. (The film was presented at Locarno as a double bill with Jude’s “Sleep #2,” a hypnotic, hour-long observation of year-round goings-on at Andy Warhol’s gravesite in Pittsburgh; the two aren’t formally sibling works, though they pair well as a dual reflection on cycles of popular culture and nostalgia.) The economic rewards and pitfalls of life in post-socialist Romania are most directly addressed in the section “Money Talks” — while one lottery-company ad invites viewers to “get ready to be rich,” another sees a woman having recently earned 12.5 million leu stating her intent to deposit her fortune in the Romanian Investment Fund.
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