‘Bright Future’ review: Romanian documentary revisits 1989 Pyongyang Festival of Youth and Students

Dir/scr: Andra MacMasters. Romania/South Korea. 2024. 89mins

The idealistic glow of the previous is seen with the benefit of hindsight in Shiny Future. Andra MacMasters’ ingenious, thought-provoking documentary is a time-capsule snapshot of 1989 as revealed by way of the thirteenth World Competition of Youth and College students held that yr within the North Korea capital of Pyongyang. The sense of optimism on the occasion mirrored a fast-changing world, however MacMasters digs deeper to convey the conflicts, contradictions and uncertainties effervescent beneath the floor. The skilled use of archive materials has seen Shiny Future named finest debut characteristic in Transilvania’s Romanian Days part, the most recent cease on a wholesome pageant run.

Creative, thought-provoking documentary

World affairs reached a big turning level in 1989. The Berlin Wall fell, scholar protesters entered Tiananmen Sq. and revolutions solid apart communist regimes throughout Japanese Europe. Shiny Future begins within the sweltering summer time of that yr, 5 months earlier than the Romanian Revolution and the autumn of Nicolae Ceausescu. A Romanian delegation of 150 units out to attend the World Competition of Youth and College students as company of honour to mark the shut friendship between Ceausescu and North Korea’s Supreme Chief Kim Il-sung.

MacMasters’ movie is constructed round VHS footage shot by attendee Emilian Urse between July 1989 and March 1990, which captures a vivid sense of an occasion attended by 22,000 delegates from 177 international locations. On the proof introduced, it was a grandiose hybrid of Olympic Video games, Eurovision and summer time camp providing cultural actions, sporting occasions, demonstrations, debates and infinite alternatives to have fun the pageant’s name for ”anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship”. The intentions are critical, however no alternative is missed to don nationwide costume, sing, dance or revel within the fastidiously choreographed pageantry.

MacMasters offers context on the pageant and former gatherings in Warsaw, Helsinki and Berlin, the place company had included Che Guevara and Black Panther activist Angela Davis. She notes that the 1957 pageant in Moscow boosted the native birthrate and signalled the arrival of rock ’n’ roll in Russia. Little ironies are woven by way of a movie through which may be felt MacMasters’ affection for the younger delegates, but in addition her appreciation of among the occasion’s absurdities. Urse’s digicam has a really feel for the humanity of the gathering: the smiling welcomes, the gestures of friendship, the photograph alternatives, the sport members straying exterior their consolation zone or past what may need been permissible on their dwelling territory.

The problems raised at Pyongyang coated a large spectrum, from the monitoring of human-rights abuses to constructing a consensus opposing weapons of mass destruction, worries over climates change, solidarity with Palestine, the legacy of colonialism and help for ladies’s rights in international locations that attempted to disclaim them. On reflection, it usually feels as if every part has modified and nothing has modified. The irony, after all, is that most of the international locations represented have been responsible of the very abuses their younger residents have been railing towards. MacMasters emphasises that with testimony provided by Unesco, The New York Instances, Romania’s Ministry of Affairs and others, which is narrated by actors. 

Shiny Future does really feel a bit rambling and unfocused in its later phases, however isn’t any much less fascinating for that. Hindsight suggests how naive some individuals have been of their makes an attempt to vary the world. It’s all too straightforward to see progress as a gentle march when current occasions have proved advances may be reversed or challenged. MacMasters nonetheless ends on a second of hope, the daybreak for Romanians of a brand new life after Ceausescu, when the world felt filled with prospects and the long run appeared genuinely vibrant.