THE ORDER OF THINGS
Ramona Badescu, Jeff Silva | France, USA, Romania 2022 | 72 Min. | Romanian with Engl. subtitles
SUNDAY, 07.05. | 7pm
De France, Saal 1 | TICKETS
Austrian Premiere
In presence of Ramona Badescu and Jeff Silva
Alexandru, the lighthearted old man with a calm voice, sits in the workshop opened by his father in 1909 and screws and turns the clocks of his customers. One hardly notes the hale 90-year-old’s past as a political prisoner under Ceaușescu’s dictatorship. But the many years in prison, the fear for his life, and the humiliations have also left their mark.
THE ORDER OF THINGS records the memories of one of the last direct witnesses of the Romanian forced labor camps, who has decided to leave the past behind and live entirely in the present. The result is an ode to resilience and the poetry of everyday life that overcomes all the horrors and manages to look towards the future.
Director: Ramona Badescu, Jeff Silva
Camera: Jeff Silva
Editing: Catherine Catella, Jeff Silva
Sound: Ramona Badescu
Production: Victor Ede (Cinephage – France), Allison Cekla, Jeff Silva (Foggy Window Productions – USA), Gradina Film
presented by
SCREENINGS
Traces de vies 2022 (World Premiere)
Rai Film Festival 2023
BIOGRAPHIES
Ramona Badescu
Ramona Badescu is a French-Romanian poet & author. Born in Romania, Badescu immigrated to France at the age of 10 after the fall of the dictatorship. Ramona has published more than 30 children’s books and poetry in French, many of which have been translated into over 20 different languages and garnering numerous accolades. Ramona is also a photographer and recently began making documentary films. “The Order of Things” is her first feature film, where she questions her Romanian roots through dialogue with her grandfather.
Jeff Silva
Jeff Silva is an American filmmaker and anthropologist who has worked at leading American schools and universities, including the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. Trained in cinema and visual arts in the US with a Ph.D. from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Silva humanistically and sensorially combines artistic practices with social science research. He has made four feature films and several shorts, all of which have to do with the fragility of individuals in the midst of turbulent social contexts. His films have been shown in festivals including Visions du Réel, MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, The Viennale, BAFICI, Doclisboa, Open City Documentary Festival… He is now based in Marseille leading the documentary cinema branch of La fabrique des écritures ethnographiques.
