I am lucky to witness the impact movies have on people when they shine a light on a specific truth. Movies, which celebrate the true nature of the human spirit, often become classics and bear repeat viewings. Movies like Casablanca, The Grapes Of Wrath, Touch Of Evil, In The Heat Of The Night, and American Graffiti speak truthfully of our collective experience, and give audiences a window to a specific set of truths for a brief period of time. The movie ignites thoughts and ideas which change and shape us, and as a result, the world in which we live.
Movies seen together in large audiences can effect real change.
Christmas Day in 1989, the Romanian Communist dictator Nicolai Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed after a summary trial. For Twenty brutal years, the The Ceausescu’s had ruled Romania with an iron hand, presiding over what had become the most tyrannical regime in Europe. Under their rule, the economy was run into the ground and the country and its unfortunate citizens were reduced to a stifling poverty. At all times Romanians were subjected to pervasive surveillance. Any and all signs of dissent were brutally and summarily crushed.
As the life quickly left the body of the fallen dictator and the Iron Curtain began to quickly rust away, it would be hard to pinpoint a singular spark which led to the revolution. In the case of Romania, one could make a rather convincing argument that the spirit that enables the citizens of that beleaguered country to rise up were the movies.
For nearly half a century, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe after WWII had to survive under the whip of post WWII Soviet totalitarianism. Often in order to preserve their national identity and resist a “new” history fabricated by the new communist masters, patriots began to develop systems of resistance against the relentless totalitarian propaganda and indoctrination. Movies began to be a subtle tool for pushing back the communist propaganda engine,
State ministries attempted to turn movie industry into its propaganda machine. In contradiction to the State-controlled efforts, several filmmakers found ways of presenting an alternative viewpoint offered by the State. Movies played an important role in celebrating the collective memory of a suppressed people in opposition to official Soviet historical movies. These offered an alternative world view that was more closely aligned to the aspirations of the audience. Often, when the Soviet system was attempting to exert total control, watching movies could be seen as a patriotic attempt to be celebrated and remember an officially frowned upon local culture. Movies often stood in direct defiance of the daily tyranny imposed on the people.
Prior to the Romanian uprising, flash of cinematic defiance bloomed prior to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1968, a renaissance of Czech cinema dared to show itself. The films of Milos Forman and Ivan Passer showed Czech a taste of freedom and a new form of political expressions. These movies were bathed in humor and absurdity, but in their story telling took direct aim at the Soviet system. For a brief period of time there was a movement towards free expression and artistic liberty, but the invasion by the Soviets and their tanks in August 1968 squashed free speech, imposed a cruel censorship, and forced many filmmakers to take refuge in the West. Freedom would not be seen again until the Czech Velvet Revolution led by poet Vaclav Havel in 1989.
In Poland, the death of Stalin gave rise to the Polish Film School movement, from which arose some of the icons of modern cinema including Roman Polanski ,Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda’s.
In response to the uprising in Gdansk and the Solidarity Movement, the Communist authorities in Poland instituted the martial law to eradicate and censor all forms of opposition against the communist rule of the nation, this included movies.
1986, the movie industry was undergoing a boom due to the introduction of home video players. Copies of American movies, now banned under Soviet rules were being smuggled into the countries that sat behind the Iron curtain. VHS players were smuggled in as well, often costing as much as a new automobile. Enterprising pirates soon were duplicating these movies, adding a local language track and circulating badly duplicated copies to a network of black market distributors throughout Eastern Europe.
In Romania, television broadcast for two hours a day, and when it did it was either Soviet cartoons or propaganda programming. The population was hungry for entertainment. They craved a glimpse of a forbidden world and when the VHS tapes showed up a more than willing audience was found. Soon movies houses were erected in apartments, barns, and warehouses. Crowds of entertainment starved Romanians packed into small rooms, paying sometimes a stiff price of admission in order to watch a pirated black market copy of the latest Jean Claude Van Damme movie.
Romanians were being shown a world that had been denied them. They consumed and consumed these films with an increasing hunger. They knew full well that they risked a possible prison sentence but still were drawn to these makeshift movie houses. The drapes were being pulled back and light courtesy of Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Julia Roberts, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was starting to shine. These movies showed audiences suffering from repression that there was another way.
In front of a small television, the flames of an emerging revolution began to overtake the Romanian people. Due to the portability of the technology and combined with the ready audience for the movies, attempts at suppression did not succeed. While the cinemas of Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia managed to be contained by their Soviet masters, this time in the Romanian movies had ignited a fire that would not be put out.
In December of 1989, riots broke out in the Romanian city of Timisoara. In response, the Romanian Communist regime decided to hold a pro government rally on December 21st. Eight minutes into the speech by Nicolai Ceaușescu, the crowd turned on him. Something that was inconceivable a decade before was now taking place. The Romanian people embolden by images of Norris, Eastwood, Wayne, Van Damme and Schwarzenegger turned on their leaders.
Four days later, Ceausescu would be dead and the Iron Curtain began to finally collapse. The dreams gifted by American movies gave rise to the wish for a better tomorrow. Communism was at an end.
In the culture of complete political and cultural repressions in the Soviet bloc, the torch of freedom has often been picked up by movies. .Movies exposed the true evil face of the communist system and sustained ideas of democracy and freedom. Movies opposed and stymied the effects of official propaganda, which attempted to show that the Soviet system as harmless, friendly, and progressive. The opposing and dissenting vision offered by the movies, against the machination of the masters of the Soviet bloc and that opposing version was presented and cherished by the hungry heart of the patriots as a beacon of truth glowing in a Soviet darkness.
Movies are Important.
