Notorious Deeds

During the final weeks preceding the Revolution of 1989, the Mihai Viteazul secondary school in Bucharest was shocked by an incident which once more revealed Ceausescu´s totalitarian regime. A student had hung posters in the city depicting the dictator as a dangerous murderer wanted for arrest. Local militia soon captured the instigator. He was delivered to the Securitate – the feared secret service – where procedural machinery was quickly set in motion: Schoolmates were questioned, the Communist youth organization was forced to intervene, the female director of the school was asked to proceed with exmatriculation, his father lost his job at the National Library.
Gabriel Tempea reconstructs these events on the occasion of a 20-year class reunion. The terror of the omnipresent regime becomes recognizable, as well as its absurdity. Officials instantly assume a conspiracy is in progress. But Cristian Dutescu was an individualist guided by his conscience. Even today he cites Kant´s famous categories of morality, the "starry sky above us and moral law within", as a major source of inspiration.
Gabriel Tempea himself was a member of the class, one who always was the last to speak – as he pointedly makes clear: With Notorious Deeds he in a certain sense again has the last word, about despotic Romanian State Communism. The comments of former classmates simultaneously reveal a free Romania, because that´s what Cristian Dutescu´s act of protest was – a signal calling for revolution. (Bert Rebhandl)

Translation: Eve Heller