Few filmmakers have reflected on cinema with the breadth, intelligence, and historical perspective of Andrei Ujică. In these searching conversations with Claudia Nedelcu Duca, the acclaimed director of Videograms of a Revolution, Out of the Present, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and TWST: Things We Said Today recounts an extraordinary life that stretches from Communist Romania to the front ranks of contemporary world cinema. He speaks with remarkable candor about literature, music, exile, censorship, the Securitate, the counterculture of 1970s Timișoara, his collaborations with the legendary rock band Phoenix, and the intellectual journey that transformed a young writer into one of cinema’s most original essayists.
Far more than a filmmaker’s memoir, Meridian is a masterclass in artistic creation and historical witness. Ujică moves effortlessly among philosophy, politics, memory, technology, and the moving image, illuminating not only the making of his own films but the tumultuous half-century that shaped them. Erudite yet deeply personal, intellectually rigorous yet unexpectedly funny, these conversations reveal an artist for whom cinema is a way of thinking about history itself. Essential reading for anyone interested in film, literature, Eastern Europe, or the enduring power of art to confront—and preserve—the truth.
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