TWST: THINGS WE SAID TODAY

TWST takes as its starting point the arrival of the Beatles in New York for their August 1965 concert at Shea Stadium, and as its title a Beatles song that alludes to the inexorable passing of time. Merging period footage with animation and following several characters through three intense summer days, Ujică’s original film goes beyond established genres to explore a time of upheaval and change when a new political arrangement, new social norms, new tastes are about to sweep away the old ways. A superb meditation on youthful bliss, the passing of time and the political, moral and aesthetic origins of our current societies as well as an hymn to New York City, glittering under the August sun.   

Director Andrei Ujică

Andrei Ujică is a screenwriter and director known for his subversive non-fictional films. Born in 1951, with a notable career in literature, in 1990 he decided to devote himself to cinema. In the same year, together with Harun Farocki, he made VIDEOGRAMS OF A REVOLUTION (1990), a powerful film about the relationship between political power and the media in Europe at the end of the Cold War. Les Cahiers du Cinema listed the film as one of the top 10 subversive films of all time. VIDEOGRAMS was the first part of a trilogy about the end of communism, which continued with OUT OF THE PRESENT (1995), the story of the cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov, who spent 10 months on board of the MIR space station, while back on Earth, with the Soviet Union collapsing. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUȘESCU, which premiered in 2010 at Cannes, ends the trilogy with a haunting portrait of the infamous dictator, recreated through period footage, and a brilliant reflection on history. For many years, Ujicǎ was a professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. He founded the ZKM Film Institute in 2002.