Film Love presents Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică’s Videograms of a Revolution

On June 26, 2025, Film Love follows up its sold-out May show at The Plaza Theatre, Atlanta’s legendary independent cinema house, with a classic documentary about how one political revolution was televised.

Late 1989: after years of oppression, the tide has begun to turn against Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. On December 21, he holds a mass televised rally in Bucharest to bolster support, but it spins out of his control as the crowd begins to rebel. The television cameras capture the dictator’s confusion and disbelief at the interruption of his speech, as an aide audibly whispers in his ear, “They are entering the building.” By the next day, the Ceauşescus are gone and the Romanian revolution is in progress.

This crucial moment comprises the riveting opening sequence of Videograms of a Revolution, the much-admired documentary film by renowned artist Harun Farocki and Romanian dissident Andrei Ujică. But it is only the beginning. Working with 125 hours of found footage, the filmmakers reconstruct the chronology of events between the dictator’s exit by helicopter from the roof and his trial and execution five days later, from multiple camera perspectives.

The editing of Videograms is a skillful dance between official state television footage, footage the official cameras recorded but did not broadcast, camcorder street imagery taken at great risk by citizens, video from inside people’s homes as they bear witness, and documentation of the chaotic atmosphere inside the television station where rebels have taken over and are under attack by forces loyal to Ceauşescu.

Because its imagery consists entirely of footage shot in the moment, Videograms does not act like a normal documentary. The film works on several levels at once. Even as the footage weaves a gripping narrative of events, the filmmakers provide a meta-commentary on the role of video and especially television in not only documenting but affecting the pace and the tenor of political upheaval. Sometimes, as in the sequence of Ceauşescu’s speech, the filmmakers show us multiple screens at once, so we understand what the TV station was broadcasting versus what their cameras were shooting. And the film is honest about the confusion, heightened emotions, fraught sense of risk and occasional absurdity inherent to fast-moving revolutionary events. Few films better capture the atmosphere of sudden, fundamental change.

A key work in Harun Farocki’s prodigious career, Videograms of a Revolution has itself become a historic document. It is currently unavailable to stream in the United States; Film Love will show it in its entirety at the Plaza.