SPOILER ALERT: Review contains spoilers.
Spotlight on:
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days dir: Cristian Mungiu starring: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Potocean.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
SMYT #24: Spotlight: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
at 10:44 PM
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Romania#The_Ceau.C5.9Fescu_regime
However, even at the start, reproductive freedom was severely restricted. Wishing to increase the birth rate, in 1966, Ceauşescu promulgated a law restricting abortion and contraception: only women over the age of 40 or who already had at least four children were eligible for either; in 1972 this became women over the age of 45 or who already had at least five children.
Restrictions of human rights were typical of a Stalinist regime: a massive force of secret police (the "Securitate"), censorship, relocations, but not on the same scale as in the 1950s.
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Ceausescu made mockery of family planning. He forbade sex education. Books on
human sexuality and reproduction were classified as "state secrets," to be used
only as medical textbooks. With all contraception banned, Romanians had to smuggle
in condoms and birth-control pills. Though strictly illegal, abortions
remained a widespread birth-control measure of last resort. Nationwide,
Western sources estimate, 60 percent of all pregnancies ended in abortion or
miscarriage.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18755277
Fresh Air from WHYY, February 7, 2008 · In 1966, Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceausescu sought to boost his nation's population by criminalizing abortion, declaring, "The fetus is the property of the entire society... anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity."
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a new film by director Cristian Mungiu, explores the ramifications of Ceausescu's ban two decades later; it's 1987 and two college women negotiate Bucharest's gloomy, paranoid black market in an effort to secure an abortion.
Ghastly. Thanks for the info, Charles.
Dude, your icon always reminds me of Laird Cregar!
Laird Cregar that .. I just don't know what to say ....
Yes! This photo specifically:
http://blogs.commercialappeal.com/beifuss/lodger6.web.jpg
Loads less potassium ferricyanid was used in my photo .. & that one is much better then the Wik photo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cregar.jpg that caused me worry
As an academic, let me add what many may see as my pedantic two cents and respond to Erin's attack on leftist and or radical academics. I think her claim that they defend so-called totalitarian societies and do not embrace so-called open societies is a simplification. It is also irrelevant to the issue of abortion in Romania because (1) Left Wing academics never defended Ceausescu, he was a vile dictator. but he was not vile because he was a so called communist. he was vile because he was a psychotic mass murder. (2) Romania was a western ally- like so many other heinous dictators- and it was actually so-called open western societies that supported him and turned a blind eye to his barbarism. They even gave him money. (3) the history of legal abortion is an outrage in so-called totalitarian and so-called open societies. I believe vera drake demonstrated the horrible situation women faced when it was recently illegal in Britain. As you know the situation in the USA is also getting worse as "pro-life" fascists try to cut public funding. ironically, Cuba- which shouldn't be depicted as a utopia, but which erin also singled out as a place that didn't deserve to be defended- offers abortions for free, which is a lot more progressive then the usa or uk.
My point in all this is not to try to rehabilitate so-called totalitarian regimes or tarnish the image of regimes in so-called open societies. Instead, I hope I have shown that the distinction between the two is nuanced and often blurred. Both are barbaric and highly inadequate for human existence.
ohhai, Chris.
Look, what you're talking about is matter of opinion. And I feel there is way too much romanticization of Communism in leftist academia.
And srsly, access to abortion cannot be the only measure of a society's open-ness.
I think you cold be right "romanticization of Communism "
Do realize one of the reasons for the "romanticization" in the symplastic view force fed quite universally for decades about the Godless Commies , the Red Mennis in the Reefer Madness simplistic vein .. and the politics of the 20th century was much more nuanced then the generally universally Kool Aid version of history
Some films & many books as of late have tried to show the nuances of former Communist or socialist countries & movements ...
On the feminist vein I learned of Manifeste des 343 salopes of Manifest of the 343 Bitches from films in the last year for the first time ...
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