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Fri Jan 30 19:14:47 EST 2015

The film is influenced director Ilinia Calugareanu's own experiences growing up in Romania, yet speaks to anyone who has ever glimpsed a broader, less restrictive world through a story.

courtesy of the Sundance Institute Ilinica Calugareanu

Many of us have fond memories of parents and children gathered around the VCR to watch a rented movie on a Friday night. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, however, Romanian families could only get their VHS tapes on the black market, making American action icon Chuck Norris a symbol of freedom and rebellion not only on-screen but in real life. These illicit movie-marathons are at the heart of Olinica Calugareanu's "Chuck Norris vs. Communism."

In 1980s Romania, thousands of Western films smashed through the Iron Curtain opening a window into the free world for those who dared to look.A black-market VHS racketeer and a courageous female translator brought the magic of film to the people and sparked a revolution.

I was 6 years old in 1986 and my parents found a way to borrow a VCR. They invited all their friends over and all night they watched grainy VHS tapes of American films. I remember all the movies I watched and especially how I felt when I stepped into the living room. It was like walking into a different dimension a secret, magical and free world. There were millions of other Romanians who secretly watched films like we did. We all grew up with the feeling that Chuck Norris was more real than the reality presented to us in the propaganda news. Those tapes and their heroes changed a whole generation. So for us, this film is about the magic of film and the power it has to change our lives. One of the biggest threads for me is about the shared experience of watching films in a dangerous and underground space. Movies meant so much more to the people in this film; it was a completely different viewing experience than the one we can relate to today. It is about the way films leave a mark on your life to the point of being able to taste that experience, even after decades have passed.

I am originally Romanian, but now I'm based in London where I started a production company with my sister and producer Mara Adina. I fell in love with telling stories about people from early on, which made me embark on a journey that took me from anthropology to ethnographic filmmaking, to working as a film editor and now directing my first feature, "Chuck Norris vs Communism."

The first challenge was finding the best way to tell the story. Dont let this story down is the sentence that stayed with me throughout the process. It was a journey of trying and failing. For quite some time, the main quest was finding the central character. After which, the question of should we go with animation or re-enactments? became central. We were constantly guided by the desire to create a cinematic experience, a film that would reach as many people as possible despite the language barrier.

courtesy of the Sundance Institute 'Chuck Norris vs. Communism'

I hope that Chuck Norris vs Communism will take the audience at Sundance back to the magical moments when they first fell in love with film.

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PARK CITY, UTAH As the political temperature of East-West relations continues to drop, two new documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival shine a klieg light on the old Cold War, revealing information that isnt only surprising, but altogether ominous.

The first is the incendiary Russian Woodpecker, a film that opens with mass protests in Ukraine and ends with the strong suggestion the Kremlin blew the Chernobyl reactor to cover-up a botched weapon. The second is Chuck Norris vs. Communism, a much lighter look at how pirated Hollywood movies influenced an entire generation of Romanians and set the stage for rebellion against former leader Nicolae Ceausescu.

Both competing in the World Cinema Documentary program, they prove how little we in the West still understand about the former evil empire despite a quarter century of Glasnost and the sight of Muscovites in Levis.

On the surface, you know, Russians look similar to Americans in their jeans but the longer you stay the more you realize that they are very, very different people, says Chad Gracia, the director behind The Russian Woodpecker.

An American theatre director who was working in Kiev on an adaptation of Anna Karenina in 2013, Gracia says hes never been a conspiracy theorist, or for that matter anti-Russian, but when his Ukrainian production designer, Fedor Alexandrovich, approached him about a Russian Woodpecker he was intrigued.

Gracia thought Alexandrovich wanted to take him to a zoo or an aviary, but when he turned to the Internet and researched what his creative collaborator was trying to tell him, he realized it wasnt a bird, but a mega-antenna that showered North America with low-wave frequencies from July 4, 1976 to 1989.

The signals made a constant tapping noise that befuddled American intelligence, causing the CIA and others to dub it the Russian Woodpecker.

The purpose of the antenna was never clear. Some thought it was designed to control weather. Others believed it was a form of mind-control.

Either way, Gracia was curious enough to take a field trip to where civilian radio operators had tracked the signal: In the very shadow of the Chernobyl reactor, where radiation levels are still 10 times normal.

There was a lot of mystery to it, so I said to Fedor: Lets make a five minute piece. Ive never made a movie before. Ill get a camera, it will be a fun little project and well put it on YouTube.

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