East of Bucharest

12:08 – East of Bucharest,F ilm by Corneliu Prumboiu, at the Film Forum, New York

For Americans of a certain age, the question “Where were you?” – asked in the course of somber parlor games – used to mean one thing: Where were you at the moment of President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, on November 22, 1963? Now, of course, the reference has been near-globally replaced by September 11, 2001. For Romanians, however, the same ponderously self-historicizing question can only mean one thing: Where were you that day in 1989, when Nicolae Ceausescu was deposed and executed?

Now playing through June 19, 12:08 – East of Bucharest http://www.filmforum.org/films/1208.html is a deadpan comedy about competing memories. Sixteen years after the revolution for which everyone wants to take credit, a TV show asks, “Where were you?” Guests in the studio, joined by phone-in participants, share their conflicting recollections of the nationwide protests that led to the end of the reign of Romania’s tragicomically bizarre dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and his summary execution on live television.