User reviews

We didn't get too much on the news here in San Francisco when this happened in 1989, just some general snippets. We knew in general what had happened, that there was a coup, that Nicolae Ceausescu was executed, etc, but not many people here really knew what happened. There was a lot of confusion, misinformation and general lack of any in depth coverage as to what was really happening at the time. National Public Radio provided the most in depth coverage, but even they didn't quite get the whole thing when it was actually happening. Mostly likely because of things like media blackouts, competing propaganda, etc. This movie shows far more than anything I ever saw reported here. This has just been released by Facets video and I was able to rent it on DVD via Netflix.

Americans might dismiss this sort of thing as old Soviet era cold war communist events that could only happen then and in those places, and while nothing comes close to this sort of revolution in the West, there are hints of that here, and that is scary. The basic issues of who controls the media are still there in both cases, omnipresent police at demonstrations, tanks in the street, like Los Angeles last year, the ignorance of the elite and refusal to recognize the common peoples problems, lies, counter lies, allegiances and loyalty, the military allegiance to > the people or the president?....Does the recent US military (retired) generals criticism of Donald Rumsfeld ring a bell?

Yep, it's pretty complicated stuff folks,and this film shows it all.It should be required viewing for all young people everywhere. Why? Because it serves as a reminder of what can happen when too many people become unhappy. It reminds people of how delicate many situations are around the world, even today. How easily a situation can deteriorate unless leaders are mighty careful.

I'm online in some discussion groups with people in Romania and nearby Slovenia and surrounding countries. In many areas, much of this was carried live in the region, but not everything. As the films shows, there were media blackouts. That's true indeed.

This will take some time, but I believe that the subtitles made for the DVD are not quite complete....We think they can be improved to get a better understanding. I'm working with my Romanian friends who do remember this and do know English to maybe eventually send Facets video a nice time stamped text file. Maybe they can release an updated second edition. After all, it should be the Romanians themselves who see this documentary and help the world better understand what happened via the English text/subtitles or any other language. It's their history, and by extension, everybody's history.

also, none of my friends in Romania recognize this video as being widely available there. We're working on getting them a copy.

Outstanding documentary, I give it a 9.0

Mostly it's because this documentary shows,like no other I have seen, how a huge number of people can turn, on the edge of a pin

Jeff Webb, San Francisco May 5, 2006

"It Can't Happen Here" - Frank Zappa 1966

The Documentary shows rare footage from the events that transpired in the regime change of '89. I particularly found it interesting how blatantly the injured woman read from the notepad the suit-man was flipping. It can be seen in the shadow on the pillow. This gives a unique insight in the propagandistic aspect of a regime change.

The way my parents and grandparents explained the communist era of Romania made it seem like this utopia, where everyone was good, life was good and everyone loved the dictator Ceausescu and I fell for it, but after watching this documentary my mind has changed. It really shows the true colors of the revolution, while I do believe that there was some foreign intervention, I think the revolution was mostly the people growing tired of the two leaders. In my opinion, and most people's to be completely honest, Ceausescu was a lesser evil, tho Elena was truly the bad one. My father did take part in the revolution, but he thinks it was worthless, I personally think that it was mostly a way to fight the trauma of getting shot at by the people meant to defend you. My mother was 14 at the time, my dad was 23, my mother lived in the Rahova area and she could hear the gunshots from her room. The documentary really made me understand what she felt during that time, so that is why I rate it a 10/10.

This documentary consists solely of amateur and TV crew video footage spanning the few days of the Romanian Revolution. Not knowing anything about the revolution beforehand, I found it very difficult to piece together who everyone was and what was happening on the screen. Reading the wikipedia article on the revolution afterwards was very insightful.

The editing of the footage is just OK. Some footage is shown multiple times for no apparent reason, the pace drags at parts, and the ending is anti-climactic.

There is a female narration which is thankfully very sparse, because she has nothing intelligent to say. A few times she states the obvious about what the camera man is doing, and the remainder of her lines are pseudo-philosophical gibberish that feels out of place.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they have a particular interest in the Romanian Revolution, and even then only as supplementary material. Nowadays, anyone who has seen modern protests on YouTube is likely to have seen more interesting footage.

Overall the documentary is weak. But it does a nice job gathering all the footage. Instead of digging in YouTube, one has many of the videos in here.

The voice over is bad. It lacks the insides needed by someone who is not familiar with the episode. It also spells too much for someone who is.

I see it was made back in 1992. So there was no clear direction in which the governmental machine was going, hence the footage is rather aimless. I'm pretty sure that the same production team would give a far different edit in 2022.

So I will give the documentary extra stars. But the value rests with the tapes and not the people who have curated the documentary. In 2020 it's a nice thing to see Anarchy existed in the 20th century. A couple of decades later, in *Bucharest, Where Are You?* one can see the repressive apparatus is functional and nothing like 1989 could happen, the republican slaves unwilling to fight have been replaced with professional thugs that will not hesitate to kill in order to pay their mortgage.