‘It was great Theatre. There were 22 million spectators applauding. . . . but there was only one performer.’ Andrei Duban

‘This week’s best television programme.’ The Observer ‘

Picture a Maoist spectacular, all fluttering flags and synchronized smiles, choreographed by Busby Berkeley and starring the entire population of a European Country. Throw in medieval royal pageants scripted by poets that make our laureate look like a venom-spitting anarchist and you will have some idea of the bizarre world that Nicholae Ceausescu created in Romania in the 1970s. The Peasant’s son who came to power after staging a huge demonstration against Soviet invasion grasped that grand public display worked. The results, as Ceausescu’s own film archive shows, make compelling viewing.’ Sylvia Simmons, The Sunday Times

I spent a month spooling through rusting tins of film at the Bucharest State Film Archive to find this material of the incredible spectacular shows Ceausescu used to stage in stadiums to glorify his regime. This film is really about politics as a kind of theatre, Communism as a giant illusion, ie a giant work of art. I know you can describe Capitalism the same way…. but this was the Communist ’society of the spectacle.’

Winner of the Grierson Award for best historical documentary, 2002