Please join Queen’s University Belfast’s Ph.D. student Victoria Baltag and Ph.D. graduand Damon Blalack, both of the Film Department of the School of Arts, English and Languages, in a Q&A about the nature of bringing regional history to life on film!

Victoria’s in-progress feature-length film, The Pitesti Experiment, is set between 1948 and 1951, as Romania was engaged in a shocking psychological experiment, one of 're-education through torture'. Political prisoners and dissidents were subjected to a psychological torture programme aimed at turning them into Communist supporters. Today, few people know that the experiment ever took place, but it help-shaped the fields of psychology and underlined the dangers of Communism.

Damon’s 28 min. film broadcast on television in the United States, is a documentary that sought, and succeeded, in restoring a dark passage of Missouri’s post-Civil War history, which had been all but buried by descendants of either side of the issue. Fire on the Mountain chronicles the rise and fall of masked vigilantes and villains, giving inspiration to the burgeoning comics industry’s masked heroes that populate our screens today.

NOTE

Deadline to book your seat: 29 January 2020

Registrants to this talk will be given early access to both films via links and passwords (links available between 29th of January to 3rd of February ONLY), and will have the opportunity to discuss with the filmmakers on 3rd of February via Zoom, the many unique challenges that can and often do beset directors of historical works, whether in narrative or documentary format.

For more information on this event, please contact Damon Blalack at dblalack01@qub.ac.uk or/and Victoria Baltag at vbaltag01@qub.ac.uk