Tara moartă

TARA MOARTĂ is an essay film, that shows a collection of photographs from a small romanian town in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The soundtrack, composed mostly of excerpts taken from the diary of Emil Dorian, a Jewish doctor from the same era, depicts what the photographs do not: the rise of antisemitism and the harrowing depiction of the romanian persecution of the Jews, a subject rarely talked about in Romania today.
“The visuals are drawn from a cache of some 8,600 photographs taken at a professional studio in the town of Slobozia, in the country’s southeast corner. Costicâ Acsinte’s company was evidently patronized primarily by the ordinary folk, who pose in their workaday dress or strut in military uniforms. The chronicles of Dorian Provide an eloquent eyewitness account of the daily reality for the capital’s Jewish citizens. The net of oppression closes in; deportations to distant death-camps commence; the horrors of genocide gradually become apparent. Striking in its aesthetic purity, with beautiful images placed in the context of scarcely conceivable horrors, the film is a multi-dimensional snapshot of history.” (Neil Young)

In the presence of Radu Jude.