The Great Communist Bank Robbery
Marele Jaf Comunist
Alexandru Solomon
Romania | 2004 | 75mins | 35mm | Colour and Black & White | Subtitled
Romania, 1959: six former members of the Nomenklatura and secret police organise a hold up of the National Bank. After their arrest, the state forces them to play themselves in a film which reconstructs the crime and the investigation. At the end of their trial, filmed live, they are sentenced to death and executed. A month later, the film Reconstitution is released and becomes a sensation throughout the country.
This is a political detective story whose speciality is that the main piece of evidence is an archive film – a film that is put on trial. Deconstruction versus reconstruction. Why did they do it? How did six communists lose their ideals to such an extent? What does it say about Romania, where this story of the bank robbery is still shadowed by doubt and misery? |
