Adalbert’s Dream (Visul lui Adalbert) By Gabriel Achim

The main character, Iuliu Ploscaru, is a lively comrade, responsible for the safety department in a typical soviet factory. It is 1986 – the year when Romanian society was emotionally touched by two big events but had to carry about the third. It was a year when Chernobyl exposed and Romanian national football team won the European championship, but in a public level there was the only event - the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Romanian Communist Party. Iuliu would rather watch the record and discuss with his fellows the great football victory but has to make an educative documentaries on safety at work for the arriving political event. Public by that period dealt with rather illusionary reality of Ceaușescu paradise, than anything true.

In a reality under the Iron Curtain, party celebrations were a must for the whole nation to come together and rejoice a bright prosperity of their communistic country. No need to say that even if some people really felt euphoria of these events, for the others it was rather hypocritical obedience to government’s rules. Now after two decades Achim denounce ambiguity of social life which had an official and also more secret but human face. Neither the safety at work which Iuliu tries to prevent nor any other things, official socialists in Romania talked about, exist. The film is laughing at the artificial reality which was produced by socialistic system. Adalbert’s Dream pokes all of those, who managed to believe in it during the period, and who, after the collapse of communist regime, still remembers it with pathetic sentiments.

The cinematography of Adalbert’s Dream is also uncommon for Romanian New Wave cinema. Together with it’s director, cameraman George Chiper-Lillemark found a perfect visual key to represent the past days by mixing 8mm and VHS shots with 35mm footage. Achim says that authenticity of the medium was really important in the filmmaking process. Using real VHS shots helps to add a portion of nostalgia to the depicted period. Its a playful collage full of illustrative and and rather parodic shots from Iuliu’s documentary. Adalbert’s Dream enchants with it’s wonderfully reconstructed period and exact homosovieticus characters and a flow of endless dialogues imaging the vital Romanian mentality unkillable even by dry Soviet regime.

By Aistė Račaitytė