Image, voice and voivodes

Abstract

The word diafilm is a Soviet invention. In communist Romania, despite the relative popularity of black and white television in the post-1968 era, the prohibitive prices of colour television sets made them a luxury good, and most people still relied on diafilms for home entertainment. This chapter focuses in particular on the image of the Middle Ages created by communist diafilms in Romania from 1950, when the first propaganda studio was created, and until 21 December 1989, when the ideological machine was abruptly stopped by the events known as the Revolution. In Eastern European communist countries in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the new communist governments were widely perceived as illegitimate foreign forces controlled by Soviet power. In Romania, the rigged elections of 1946 led to the establishment of the first communist government. The victory was followed by protests and numerous acts of resistance.