Restaging the 1989 Revolution: The Romanian New Wave

Almost 20 years after the 1989 Romanian revolution, the subject is experiencing
a powerful comeback in a number of cinematic reflections that are at the forefront of the so-
called Romanian New Wave, including Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest,
Radu Muntean’s The paper will be blue and Catalin Mitulescu’s How I spent the end of
the world. This article seeks to establish some of the contributions that the New Wave is
making to the reconstruction of the 1989 revolutionary moment, but also, and more
importantly, to the renegotiation of Romania’s present role in the local and global imaginary.
The article offers a particular reading of these films as inspired by Walter Benjamin’s
writings on history and film, a reading that seeks to understand the careful temporal and
spatial renegotiation of the revolutionary moment of December 1989, the key role that the
technology of film has played throughout the course of the Romanian revolution and its
aftermath, as well as the critical importance that the revolutionary moment continues to have
for the way in which Romania imagines itself and is seen from abroad.