Pitesti: The Experiment
The life story of Herman, a promising young man who under extreme circumstances changed into Romania's most effective torture machine in the infamous Pitesti Experiment during the Communist Regime.
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Victoria BaltagDirectorThe Director and teacher of the highschool
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Victoria BaltagWriterscript contributor (documentation, idea, part of dialogues
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Lexa AxinteWriterscriptwrite
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Victoria BaltagProducer
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Ion CaramitruKey Cast"Director"
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Project Type:Feature
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Runtime:1 hour 20 minutes 48 seconds
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Completion Date:May 24, 2023
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:Yes
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Student Project:No
VICTORIA BALTAG is a filmmaker, a scholar activist, an a social entrepreneur and an artist. She graduated of the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences at the University of Bucharest. She also completed a four-year degree in Sociology and Social Welfare at the University of Bucharest. In 2010, she completed an MSC in Management and International Marketing at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest and in 2011 she also completed her degree in Film, History and TV at the University of Birmingham, graduating with Merit. Victoria produced more than 20 short films inspired by English plays and anthropological documentaries, some of which won awards. Currently, Victoria Baltag is a PhD student in Film at Queen’s University Belfast, researching the film life of a Romanian director less known in Romania, Benjamin Fondane.
Victoria Baltag is the first independent female director to make content films. She is also the first director to make a feature film about the phenomenon of re-education in Pitesti (1949-1952), the last film with actor Ion Caramitru. She worked for this 12 year with 120 actors and more than 800 people in the team with no budget. Another project to which she devoted time and passion was a documentary about filmmaker Titus Munteanu. For the feature film about Titus Munteanu, Victoria spent more than four years researching in the TVR archives and conducting interviews with people who knew the great television producer.
Director Statement
Inspired by a true story and a failed re-education experiment, the movie “The Pitesti Experiment” looks at shattered human fabric, reversible roles, broken humanity. It depicts a possible future if we refuse to listen, watch, understand.
This movie unveils the horrors of the recent past of S-E Europe, a past which has the universal common experience worldwide in terms of cruelty,re-education, brainwash and domination.
We have documented this feature film for four years. We have read the books, watched the documentary films, met the few survivors. More than 5,000 students were tortured there. Tragic stories occurred there that we can hardly imagine. We have talked with people who had their parents in the communist prisons, I have seen their tears, we have touched their wounded hearts. We believe that the truth heals and we believe that we need to know the truth, so we can build on it and from it.
This feature is a gesture of commemoration and respect to the young people who suffered through mental and physical torture, persecution, freedom deprivation. It is so important to know our recent history – as the Pitesti Experiment was – in order to learn from it and to make sure it never happens again.
We recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Soviet troops liberation of Auschwitz, known to most as Holocaust Day (January 27th). Soon after this liberation, the Nazi-run death camps were replaced by Soviet forced labor and re-education camps - many of them just as brutal. What do we know about communism? Too little. There is a lack of information, lack of documents maybe, lack of interest (perhaps). The communism made the highest number of victims in the humankind history, but who talks about this? Furthermore, how many Communism Crimes Memorials do we know?
In Romania the communist former prisons are about to degrade. No one cares about the memory, about the history, about the fact that those places should be museums so we can remember the past, learn from it, and never allow to happen again. The Pitesti former prison where the infamous Pitesti experiment took place is being transformed into a gym and business offices. Only a quarter of the building is still a museum and can be visited. Why?
In 2011 I have participated to a Summer School at Ramnicu Sarat, where the ‘Silence Prison’ was in the communist time (now this prison can’t be visited anymore as the walls are collapsing). The summer school was organized by the Institute of the Communist Crimes in Romania and through them I have found, for the first time, about the Pitesti Experiment (because in more than 25 years of education in Romania, I had no information about this part of the history). At that time, I was a student at Birmingham University and immediately after watching the ‘Demasking’ documentary film about the ‘Re-education Phenomenon’, I wanted to know if there is any feature film about the Pitesti Experiment. It was important for people to know what happened with the best students in Romania between 1948-1952. A movie would reach the wider audience easier than a book , I though. A movie would be an opportunity for the new generation to find out more about the true, unfabricated past. Alas, there was no film about The Pitesti Experiment.
Hence I decided to make one just to raise awareness and give information about a such a hidden, atrocious moment in the Romanian history. My movie unveils the horrors of the communist era. I have documented this feature film for four years. I have read the books, watched the documentary films, met the few survivors. More than 5,000 students were tortured there. Tragic stories occurred there that we can hardly imagine. I have talked with people who had their parents in the communist prisons, I have seen their tears, I have touched their wounded hearts. I believe that the truth heals and I believe that we need to know the truth, so we can build on it and from it.
My film about the Pitesti Experiment is a contribution to remembering the horrors and abominable moments of Romanian communism. This feature is a gesture of commemoration and respect to the young people who suffered through mental and physical torture, persecution, freedom deprivation. It is so important to know our recent history – as the Pitesti Experiment was – in order to learn from it and to make sure it never happens again. These atrocities should not be forgotten so that the suffering of these people will not be in vain. Here is what one of the film donors had to say about it: "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing". Don't say that "Pitesti experiment" will never happen again. It depends on us, all of us, and what we do so it will not repeat.’’ (Voicu Ciobanu)