Letter from the New Town

Overview

What more understated, and yet more effective, ode to urbanization than Mesaroș’s film, which consists entirely from dynamic black&white photographs connected by a voice-over commentary written from the perspective of a naughty pre-teen boy who enjoys to the full the benefits of modernization? His village (Nehoiu, in Buzău county) is about to become a town; the boy writes a letter to his cousin from the capital, Bucharest, to tell him about his daily life. As in Red Flag, humour is a crucial element employed to smooth down the otherwise transparent political ‘message’ of the film: when the boy swallows a button, the mother takes him to the “new” hospital, where the doctors take an x-ray picture “to see if it’s from the shirt or the pants”; the machine is “so good” that they can clearly see what sort of button it is.

Details

Status

Released

Release date

January 1, 1978

Original language

Romanian

Spoken languages

Romanian

Countries

Romania

Production

Sahia Film

Budget

Not recorded

Revenue

Not recorded