#6 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST (D: Corneliu Porumboiu, 89 min, RO, 2006)

 It is our great pleasure to invite you to an evening with award-winning Romanian director CORNELIU PORUMBOIU and Variety film critic JAY WEISSBERG!  We will have a conversation with Porumboiu about his Cannes-winning feature film debut, “12:08 East of Bucharest”, and as a special treat, we are very happy to welcome Jay Weissberg for a short introduction to the Romanian New Wave and Porumboiu’s contribution to it. SYNOPSIS:Six years after the 1989 Revolution, a local television station in Bucharest invites several guests to share their moments of glory, as they stormed the city hall chanting “Down with Ceausescu!” during the revolutionary events. An alcoholic history teacher and a lonely retiree are forced to answer questions from dubious viewers.    ABOUT THE FILM:“Porumboiu found here an extremely deft way to make an impossibly grand statement without getting the least bit heavy about it. Not heavy until the end. This thing is dry-ass funny wisdom until the culminating karate chop to the throats of its three stooges. And us. We are made to choke on our laughter. All laughter, since forever: to laugh from inside the nightmare of history because no nightmare is all nightmare.” - Jason, Mubi-user www.35-k.de