London Film Festival 2024 Review! Eight Postcards from Utopia, by writers/directors Christian Ferencz-Flatz and Radu Jude, is beautiful because it approaches the viewer with other people’s stuff. The film is made purely of selections from an extensive catalog of old Romanian television commercials. It’s a bit like being given a bunch of flowers. Sure, they didn’t actually create them, but it’s lovely all the same.
The capsule summary for the 2024 London Film Festival reads thusly: “…weaves post-socialist Romanian ads into a narrative on life, love, death, human frailty, nature, the supernatural, and the historical transition. It is a film between found poetry, outdated encyclopedias, trash art, and Summa theologiae…”
That sounds about right. But it doesn’t prepare you for what we have here. The only inkling of hands at the tiller is the choice of editing and the intertitles Ferencz-Flatz uses to break the film into eight segments and an epilogue. There are not even opening credits. It jump cuts into a whole Pepsi commercial from the Euro ’96 football tournament, and off we go through a delightful ninety minutes of found art and contemplation.
There are a number of things that make this film a treat. But it’s the unsung heroes of yesterday, the many maestros of Romanian Madison Avenue, people who actually made fun of adverts, who certainly deserve plaudits. Pound for pound, advertising is the most expensive medium on Earth, so sitting back like a corpulent Medici to enjoy the sophisticated art of these backwater postcards is surprisingly easy.
“…made purely of selections from an extensive catalog of old Romanian television commercials…”
Like the terrific all-night ad expo, La Nuit des Publivores (which was exhibited in Bucharest as recently as 2016 – I wonder if they caught it?), it has the nature of a magpie. This film presents the adverts more or less unaltered. They may top and tail them, and sometimes the soundtrack is removed, but it has the decency to not intrude with aggressive editing or subversion of the material. It just uses placement, minimal titling, and subtle editing as narrative. This was probably challenging in its own way and is very becoming.
The age of most of the content, and its hailing from the blue remembered hills of watchable mass media, is surprisingly stimulating. It also shows that the bonds between theft and art are eternal; An advert for computers rips off Luc Besson’s The Last Battle beautifully, and Teardrop by Massive Attack is copied so wholly it probably would have been sued if anyone noticed. It’s all just very watchable, and the fertility of the chosen ground, that of capitalism emerging from the shell of decades behind the Iron Curtain, gives the film innate political and philosophical weight.
“Maybe we’ll never be Germans, but if I don’t start acting civilized, who will?” inquires a motorist while handling a junction in a public service announcement. The PSA advises, “Romania will grow through decency and responsibility.” It is so hopeful and naïve about the future and Europe in general that it becomes very moving and deeply dignified.
Modern advertising never recovered from Apple’s well-meaning, Watchtower-style representation of diversity. It seems to have spent years now being joyless, careful, and guilty. This delightful little gift reminds us of the power and joy that advertising can actually bring to people’s lives. It’s a terrific little film.
"…reminds us of the power and joy that advertising can actually bring to peoples lives..."
