Sunday, October, 20, 2013, 2:00 p.m.
Helmut Stern Auditorium, University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA)
525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Screening

Reconstruction
Reconstituirea, 1968, Lucian Pintilie, English Subtitles, 100 min

Q&A with Ramona Uritescu-Lombard

A prosecutor, policemen, and teacher bring the students Vuica and Nicu to a restaurant to re-enact their drunken brawl there, and have it filmed to show the effects of alcoholism. Both Horia Pătraşcu’s novel and the screenplay (co-authored by Pătraşcu and Pintilie) are closely based on real-life events. The incident was witnessed by Pătraşcu during the early 1960s, and took place in his native town of Caransebeş, shortly before a celebration of August 23 (Communist Romania’s national holiday, commemorating the 1944 coup).The militiamen involved had detained two youths with no prior criminal record, accusing them of having been drunk and disorderly, and had decided to make them reenact the scene in order to educate the public about the perils of alcohol. In a 1999 interview, Pătraşcu acknowledges that, as a university student and part-time activist at a local culture house, he was a member of the original crew.