Studies in Eastern European Cinema

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The Useful Cinema of State Secrecy. On Some

Socialist Romanian Spy Films

Christian Ferencz-Flatz

To cite this article: Christian Ferencz-Flatz (04 Mar 2024): The Useful Cinema of State
Secrecy. On Some Socialist Romanian Spy Films, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, DOI:
10.1080/2040350X.2024.2324642

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Studies in Eastern European Cinema
https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2024.2324642

The Useful Cinema of State Secrecy. On Some Socialist

Romanian Spy Films
Christian Ferencz-Flatz
University of Bucharest/National University for Theatre and Film Bucharest, București, Romania

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
A decree passed by the socialist Romanian state at the beginning of the Useful film; educational
1970s stipulated the need to defend state secrets as a condition for the film; state socialism;
country’s economic and social progress in the context of its growing espionage
participation in world commerce. While the law operated with a wide
notion of state secrecy, referring to any piece of information which, if
disclosed, could jeopardize the Romanian state’s interests, it included
harsh regulations with regard to personal contacts with foreign citizens
and served primarily for establishing a heightened operative control
over the local economic life. Following the Romanian State Security
Council’s encouragement of campaigns for popular education, which
should help prevent any trespassing of this decree, the early 1970s saw
the commissioning of several instruction films made by the newly
founded Film Service of the Ministry of the Interior as a form of ‘coun-
terintelligence training of the working class’. The present paper contex-
tualizes and closely analyzes some of these films staging fictional cases
of industrial espionage and their subsequent investigation by State
Security as a form of useful cinema, arguing that, aside from their main
educational mission of raising awareness about the legal responsibilities
ensuing from the decrees concerning state secrecy, these films also
acted as an instrument of national, geopolitical and institutional
self-representation.

Introduction
This paper analyses a number of films produced by the Romanian secret police after 1970
in the context of the national laws concerning state secrecy with the declared purpose of
preparing the general public for handling situations of industrial espionage. What follows
is therefore a discussion of some ‘spy films’, but ‘spy films’ of a very peculiar kind since, on
the one hand, these films were not meant as mere entertainment, but as educational films
serving specific purposes of instruction among other things. In other words: they are ‘useful
films’ and not thrillers, though both their actual use and their difference to the popular
genre of espionage thrillers will be up for discussion.1 On the other hand, the films were
made in the aftermath of the laws concerning the protection of state secrecy, which I will

CONTACT Christian Ferencz-Flatz christian.ferencz@phenomenology.ro University of Bucharest/National University

for Theatre and Film Bucharest, București, Romania
© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. FERENCZ-FLATZ

immediately address in more detail, by the Film and Editorial Service of the Romanian
Ministry of the Interior in collaboration with the Securitate Unit for economic counterin-
telligence and for the use and benefit of either Securitate workers themselves or generally
a broader audience of engineers and workers involved in handling state secrets of one sort
or another. Therefore, these films are not just produced under the auspices of the state
apparatus of repression—something that can be said to generally apply to films made in
the region between World War II and 1989 as far as they were subjected to various forms
of state censorship—, but for and by its ‘institutions of force’ in particular (militia, military
and secret police). Consequently, they are spy films not just in that they show the investi-
gative and surveillance work of spies, but also in the very literal sense that they are actually
made by and to serve the interests of intelligence workers, as a useful supplement to their
chores and duties, in other words: they are ‘films that work’2 in that they do a work of (eco-
nomic) counterintelligence.
In dealing with these matters, the paper primarily draws on two recent trends in film
scholarship. On the one hand, it adds to a growing corpus of research concerned with
charting the practices of useful film under State Socialism.3 While these films entertain a
dialogue with similar Western films, being frequently exhibited within a circuit of interna-
tional festivals, they are also marked by the specificity of state production as well as by the
social and intellectual circumstances of really existing socialism in ways that render them
entirely unique. On the other hand, this work is inspired by a rising tide of publications
focusing on the films produced, commissioned or supervised by military or police institu-
tions.4 Insofar as socialist states as eminently police states have developed an extensive array
of practices of surveillance, control, investigation and coercion, serving the political pur-
poses of the socialist state, the analysis of useful films produced within this context as
forensic evidence, educational and instructional films, reenactments, investigative films
etc. proves particularly rewarding for outlining both striking contrasts and remarkable
continuities across the stark divides of the Cold War. Indeed, as will be shown in the fol-
lowing, these materials are relevant not just for film scholarship in general, both for their
peculiar aesthetics and the ways in which they communicate with the larger spectrum of
the popular cinema of their time, but also for the historian exploring the institutional dis-
courses of this period as they put forth techniques of national, geopolitical and institutional
self-representation.

Protecting State Secrecy

Before going any further into the details of these films, it is useful to first more concretely
establish their determinant context. The defense of state secrecy was introduced into
Socialist Romanian law at the end of the 1960s. A decree of the State Council from 1969,
later expanded by the Romanian Great Assembly into law in 1971, explicitly stipulated the
need to defend state secrets as a condition for the country’s economic prosperity and social
progress in the context of its growing participation in world commerce.5 As such, the decree
was primarily motivated by economic reasons with only a slight hint at a military and
political rationale. When reading the decree, however, one is immediately struck by the
extremely broad understanding of state secrecy that is put to use here. Basically, the concept
covers any document, or even piece of information the disclosure of which could in any
way jeopardize the Romanian state’s economic, techno-scientific, military or political
 Studies in Eastern European Cinema 3

interests. As such it ranges from actual military secrets (the placement of the main military
units, the number of soldiers and the existing equipment), to political matters (the internal
politics of party and government, the country’s international relationships or the extent of
its popular support), notwithstanding the most various aspects of economic life (the devel-
opment of local industry, natural resources, transport and telecommunication systems,
agriculture, and especially the local technical and scientific advancements) and even data
concerning social and cultural matters (for instance statistical data referring to the ethnic
composition of various part of Romania and their conflicting religious beliefs). Of course,
one can easily surmise the degree of paranoia that can ensue in a society where almost
everything is viewed as a secret to various degrees (highly secret, top secret, or plain secret,
also including the lighter class of ‘professional secrets’), in need to be protected under threat
of criminal prosecution.6 Katherine Verdery’s book, My Life as a Spy, which documents her
field work as an anthropologist in Romania during the 1970s as reflected in the secret police
files resulting from her surveillance, where she is followed alternatively as a CIA agent or
a Hungarian agitator, offers a perfect illustration of this insane climate of generalized sus-
picion and confabulation.7 However, in foregrounding the paranoia, one shouldn’t forget
the pragmatic rationale that ultimately justified this legal framework.
Indeed, as can be easily surmised by considering the various fields of application of the
laws concerning state secrecy in the precise political context of Ceaușescu’s early years in
power, they were from the onset an instrument meant to tackle several interrelated issues.
For one, as the constant emphasis on the foreign press shows, they created the legal means
for putting an end to denigratory interviews or dissident opinions expressed by Romanian
citizens abroad, for instance in the increasingly popular broadcasts of Radio Free Europe,
by requiring all interactions with foreign citizens and particularly the press to first obtain
party approval. Secondly, the laws allowed fighting the increasingly acute problem of ‘brain
drain’, since they raised the stakes of emigration by labeling the creative work of local engi-
neers as key for national security, while also keeping scientists and engineers from publi-
cizing their work abroad in ways that could make them attractive for foreign competitors.
Thirdly, given the broad opening of the country to international tourism, which was encour-
aged by Ceaușescu early on, they offered the sole possible means for the secret police to
keep track of the increasing number of foreigners in the country, which could hardly be
followed by operatives, in fostering the suspicion of the population towards foreign nationals
and forcing them to declare all interactions. Finally and most importantly, the laws also
offered a way to exert a stronger political control over the economic sector given Ceaușescu’s
initiative to stimulate international trade by allowing for more direct connections between
local State enterprises and foreign markets without the excessive hindrances of centraliza-
tion. Thus, the protection of state secrecy served as one of the main justifications for the
need to detach intelligence officers throughout the economic sector. In brief, the measure
served an entire range of more or less covert purposes and it is within this complex field of
interlaced intentions that the aforementioned useful films also need to be interpreted.

Counterintelligence Work in the Socialist Economy

Researchers like Verdery and others have extensively shown how the laws concerning state
secrets led to an unprecedented proliferation of secrecy in Romanian society, politically
charging situations and contexts that were otherwise far remote from politics, as this was
4 C. FERENCZ-FLATZ

the case for Verdery’s own research into local folklore, which drew suspicions of foreign
espionage.8 More relevantly, however, the move also entailed some significant mutations
in the activity of the secret police itself, which are especially interesting to consider for us
in what concerns the II. Direction, the so-called department of ‘economic counterintelli-
gence’. The best source for mapping these transformations is no doubt the official bulletin
of the intelligence agency, called Securitatea, a journal published for internal use (it was
itself branded as ‘top secret’), which was published in four issues per year ever since 1968,
comprising detailed case studies, theoretical analyses, presentations of new techniques,
procedures and devices, translations, but also literary musings of field agents, games and
exercises, or letters from their internal readership. Numerous articles from the beginning
of the 1970s address the challenges to national security posed by the already mentioned
political reforms undertaken during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s first years in power: encouraging
trade and stimulating international tourism, the dismantling of some of the obstacles of
excessive centralization etc. As already mentioned, one of the massively consequential pre-
ventive decisions taken to manage the risks ensuing from these reforms was gradually
detaching economic counterintelligence officers onsite to all strategic branches of the
Romanian economy, from transportation to large scale producers of export goods of any
sort, or other enterprises engaged in foreign trade.
In 1970, at the beginning of this process, in Bucharest alone 34 economic counterintel-
ligence agents already had offices in the most important local plants and enterprises.9 Their
task was officially to fight off three main perils, which were deemed central for the work of
economic intelligence: sabotage, attempts to undermine the national economy, and indus-
trial espionage, but these labels actually stood for a far larger class of everyday problems.10
First, as one of the officers writing for Securitatea in 1970 explains, ‘hostile activities can
often hide under the mask of ignorance, incompetence and negligence, such that it is often
difficult to precisely delineate between them and actual sabotage’.11 What this meant con-
cretely was, on the one hand, that avoiding mere slip-ups or technical failures also became
to some extent a matter of avoiding unwanted political suspicions in the perspective of
workers employed in the strategic economic sectors; in the perspective of the intelligence
officers, on the other hand, it involved letting themselves become more and more involved
in the most trivial technical details of industrial work like replacing used parts of equipment
that could pose a danger for workers or auditing their accounting, which de facto most of
the times led them to act in the plant as a sort of ‘duct tapers’ for all the little problems
ensuing from bad planning and organization.12 Secondly, ‘undermining the national econ-
omy’ actually stood for poor negotiation practices in the context of Romanian participation
at international trade, which often resulted in disadvantageous contracts, overpriced acqui-
sitions, ruined products sent for export or deficient imports.13 In this context, counterin-
telligence officers were again needed to perform an entire range of tasks from double-checking
export merchandise to vetting auctioning proposals or even doing actual detective work
for determining the reservation point of the opposing party during negotiations. Finally,
‘industrial espionage’—when it wasn’t actually conducted by the Romanian secret police in
the service of national interests—most of the time only amounted to fighting petty corrup-
tion by preventing local officials and employees working in international trade from being
bought off by representatives of foreign companies for signing poor deals.14
This short overview of the wide range of tasks pertaining to the actual work done by the
economic counterintelligence department of the Romanian Securitate during this period
 Studies in Eastern European Cinema 5

is useful to keep in mind when further considering their fictional or hypothetical depiction
in the useful films authorized by the department, insofar as it makes visible the narrative
spin-offs and the specific rhetoric put to use in these films, which I will now come to discuss.

The Film Studio of the Ministry of the Interior

The films produced by the Ministry of the Interior in the decade following the decrees
concerning state secrecy are divided into five main categories, according to the official
catalogue of their main producer, which is the Film and Editorial Service of the Ministry.15
These are: (a) films intended for the professional instruction of Securitate agents (9 films
produced between 1972 and 1983); (b) films produced for the professional instruction of
militia officers (15 films produced between 1972 and 1983); (c) films realized for the pro-
fessional instruction of other branches of the Ministry of the Interior, for instance, the
penitentiary system (11 films produced between 1972 and 1983); (d) films intended for the
educational activities organized with the entire personal of the Ministry of the Interior (12
films produced between 1972 and 1983) and finally (e) films to be used at events organized
with people of the working class for the purpose of raising awareness of existing laws and
for counterintelligence training (19 films produced between 1972 and 1983).
It is plain to see from the onset that these categories are unevenly represented, with the
last category leading to the production of over double the output of the first. At the same
time, these categories involve a pretty diverse set of objectives and, indeed, when sifting
through the catalogue, one immediately takes note of a number of important differences
between them. For one, the films are, in the order presented here, increasingly public. While
the films destined for the training protocols of Securitate officers were initially classified as
top secret—and they are to this day not readily accessible in the local film archive—the last
category in the classification comprises films meant to be shown outside the inner circuit
of the Ministry of the Interior to a larger audience and they were occasionally even circulated
publicly at local Festivals like Cântarea României. Seen as such, the films form a continuum,
which at one end communicates with the classified protocols, missions and procedures of
Securitate activity, serving as actual instruction work, while at the other end they address
the outside world, entertaining a fluid relationship with a wide range of programs destined
for the general public. Indeed, one can see, for instance, that some of the films made by the
Alexandru Sahia Studio, the main producer of public non-fictional cinema during com-
munism, under commission from the Ministry of the Interior were also accepted as potential
viewing material for the ‘counterintelligence training of the working class’ described in the
last category of this classification.16 To be sure, such films were comissioned to Sahia mostly
in the early 1970s before the actual founding of the Ministry’s own Studio in 1972, but the
films resulting from this collaboration were nonetheless still used as training material in
subsequent years as well, as the lists of exam bibliographies presented in several issues of
Securitatea clearly show.17 Moreover, the main topics related to state secrecy also found
their way into some of the popular fictional films of the period, which also arguably operated
a covert form of ‘counterintelligence training’ for the general public. Thus, Romanian pop-
ular films like Aventuri la Marea Neagră [Adventures at the Black Sea] (1972), Agentul Straniu
[Agent Strange] (1974) or Șapte zile [Seven days] (1973) in particular ostensibly draw their
inspiration from Western espionage thrillers, offering a sort of Socialist parodies of James
Bond films, with local star Florin Piersic in the lead. Simultaneously, however, they showcase
6 C. FERENCZ-FLATZ

all of the main motives played through in the more sober educational films on industrial
espionage: they are about protecting the secrecy of local developments in industry and
science (and we see the local James Bond risking his life for the copyrights of Romanian
engineering); they also stress the risks that come with entertaining contacts to foreign
citizens, for instance in an academic context, when presenting at international conferences;
and as such they indeed also implicitly and half-jestingly serve to prepare the general audi-
ence for being wary in situations not covered by instruction programs proper, for instance
when vacationing at the cosmopolitan local sea-side, packed with international tourists.
Aside from their differences in address, however, the films pertaining to the five afore-
mentioned classes also visibly diverge in what concerns their topics and their specific treat-
ment of the issues under discussion. At the one end of the spectrum, we thus see the
instruction films for Securitate workers narrowly focus on technical sets of procedures:
what to do in the case of a hostage situation at the airport, how to verify external trade
contracts and so on. At mid-way, the films destined for the entire personal of the Ministry
of the Interior are mostly festive materials, like the celebration of 35 years since the founding
of the Ministry’s own sports club, Dinamo, while at the opposite end of the spectrum, the
films intended for the counterintelligence instruction of workers in the economic sector
struggle to find a fine balance between the technical depiction of models of behavior, on
the one hand, and rhetorical and propagandist artifice, on the other. In what follows, I will
pursue a closer reading of four of these films in order to highlight some of their most salient
features.

Economic Counterintelligence Films as Multifarious Self-Representations

When selecting the films I discuss below, I was guided by several principles. For one, I was
constrained by questions of availability, insofar as most of the technical instruction materials,
and especially those intended exclusively for the use of intelligence officers, are not yet
declassified and as such they were not available for inspection. Secondly, however, and
judging both from the films viewed and from their detailed descriptions available in the
aforementioned catalogue of the Ministry of the Interior’s film studio, the narratives of the
films and their rhetoric is visibly more complex in the case of the films destined for a larger
audience, that is: those pertaining to the last of the five categories mentioned above. Indeed,
these films generally intended for the counterintelligence training of workers in the eco-
nomic sector deploy an elaborate web of arguments in their need to balance between diverg-
ing claims and institutional intentions, and this complex intentionality finds its way, as will
be shown below, in the complexities of their narratives. This is precisely why, in my analysis,
I have specifically favored films pertaining to this latter category. Thirdly, it is worth men-
tioning that these films are to some degree nonetheless also representative for the entire
production of the studio, not just because they largely share in comparable interests and
situations, but also because they are all produced by the same team of collaborators, script-
writers, directors and consultants, who are generally employed for all the films produced
by the Ministry’s studio. Thus, the four films I discuss below are all directed by the two
most active filmmakers affiliated with the film studio of the Ministry: Traian Fericeanu and
Mircea Gândilă. These two filmmakers directed 46 of the 66 films produced by the studio
in the decade between 1972 and 1983, pertaining to all of the five categories discussed
above.18 Moreover, their profile and career are generally representative for most of the
 Studies in Eastern European Cinema 7

collaborators of the studio during this period. Fericeanu studied at the VGIK in Moscow
during Stalin and worked for several years at the film studio of the army, before switching
to the film service of the Ministry of the Interior at its founding in 1972, where he remained
until his death in 1983, directing over 30 films and collaborating at others. Mircea Gândilă
was himself a Securitate officer first, who worked initially as a consultant on some of the
films of the Alexandru Sahia Studio, commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior prior to
1972. Subsequently, he also realized his own films for the Ministry, being the second most
productive director of the Ministry’s studio after Fericeanu. During the 1970s, he was also
employed as a consultant on some of the high profile fiction features directed by Sergiu
Nicolaescu. Fourthly and finaly, the four films I discuss below, which have all been produced
in the second half of the 1970s, were chosen for both their typicality, in that they show
features shared to a large degree by the entire production of the Ministry’s studio, and their
specificities, which illustrate the diversity of issues and concerns addressed by these films.
Based on the analysis of these four films, I will in the following argue that, aside from their
main educational mission of raising awareness about the legal responsabilities ensuing from
the decrees concerning state secrecy, the films produced by the Ministry of the Interior also
served an overarching purpose, acting as an instrument of national, geopolitical and insti-
tutional self-representation in the specific context created by these decrees.
In order to emphasize this point with regard to the four films I have in view, it is worth
first quickly presenting the main thread of their narrative. A short film from 1975, Ideile—
avuție de mare preț [Ideas, a precious treasure] (1975, dir. Traian Fericeanu), generically
depicts a few possible cases of mishandling industrial state secrets: an engineer presents an
invention at an international conference and foreign scientists get to patent the invention
first; another scientist forgets his briefcase in a bookshop, but fortunately it is found and
returned, while the film concludes with a voice over stressing the moral takeaway by empha-
sizing the importance of Romanian innovation in the service of national independence and
sovereignty. Another film, Rămășag fără martori [A wager without witnesses] (1977, dir.
Traian Fericeanu), tells the tale of an engineer, whose fiancé entertains connections to
foreign citizens. In fact, she is soon proven to be an industrial spy, who sells the photographs
of his sensitive secret projects abroad. Luckily, the economic counterintelligence service is
on to her plans and manages to entrap her with the engineers willing collaboration before
it’s too late. Another story, Undițe ce nu prind… pește [Fishing rods that don’t catch fish]
(1978, dir. Mircea Gândilă), follows an engineer who is being insidiously courted and ulti-
mately bribed by a foreign commercial representative for signing a disadvantageous contract.
The film mainly blames the luxurious tastes of his wife for his poor judgment, but in the
end the engineer regains his integrity just before any actual wrongdoing. He involves the
counterintelligence workers who were already monitoring his case and takes the right deci-
sion to renegotiate the contract for a lower price. Finally, another film from the end of the
1970s, Surpriza domnului Bruk [The surprise of Mr. Bruk] (1979, dir. Traian Fericeanu),
shows the attempts made by a foreign technical consultant to uncover the details of a local
experimental project. He finally succeeds to photograph some secret documents, but, as it
turns out, the economic counterintelligence officers were aware of the case and had switched
the materials with fake documents. These four examples should suffice to allow for a more
synthetic analysis of the particularities of these materials, focusing on the three different
ways in which they serve as instruments for (a) national, (b) geopolitical and (c) institutional
self-representation.
8 C. FERENCZ-FLATZ

(a) Films such as these are, of course, primarily informative in that they overtly instruct
their viewers with regard to their legal obligations, presenting some possible cases of invol-
untary or voluntary trespassing to be avoided. But the legal duties of workers in the eco-
nomic sector hardly needed any more stressing as such, since excerpts of the decrees were
in fact displayed on large panels and posters throughout the plants, state agencies and
enterprises under discussion, as can be noticed in several of the films as well. What strikes
the viewer instead is that, when developing a more fine-grained casuistry of the laws con-
cerning state secrecy, these films focus predominantly on the most self-flattering, but hardly
the most common class of situations, which might occur, namely that of Romanian inno-
vations in engineering and industry being avidly pursued by foreign agents and especially
by Western competitors. To be sure, in hindsight, this perspective also marginally allows
for some actual glimpses of realism in the films. Thus, almost all of the films include some
more or less implicit complaint about Romania’s technological dependence on the West,
with most of its technology in the 70s and 80s indeed relying on outdated and therefore
cheaper Western patents. Moreover, some of the films also marginally show how local trade
employees could be bought off with expensive coffee and American cigarettes, in scenes
ostensibly suggesting that Romanian firms were in fact only importing second hand Western
technology and not developing any pioneering devices, while other films also briefly touch
upon thorny matters like the fake diplomas sold illegally by professors at the local Technical
University, which can raise some doubts with regard to local engineering. It is precisely
against this backdrop, which is merely suggested, but not addressed at length, that local
innovations are indeed celebrated in these films as a desired break-through flattering
national sentiment, that comes with the promise of future technological autonomy.
While thus pumping up the national self-esteem of the Romanian working class, the
films overtly serve a form of nationalist self-representation, which was gaining traction
throughout the 1970s in other fields of Romanian society as well. Katherine Verdery19 has
ostensibly documented how the Romanian Socialist State’s turn towards the nationalist
ideology in this period was initially driven by Ceaușescu’s bid for autonomy in relation to
the Soviet Union following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but soon reached quite
excessive forms with the Party’s struggle to exercise authority over the national idea in front
of older and better entrenched Nationalist traditions predating local socialism. A position
that gained prominence within this context, in the literary field initially, being favored by
official discourse as well, was that of local indigenism better known under the label of
‘protochronism’. Launched by literary historian Edgar Papu in 1974, this position argued
that Romanian literature was not just an epigonic replication of Western models, but instead
a highly original set of creations, which to a certain extent even anticipated literary inno-
vations of world literature. The extensive debate following this discussion was ostensibly
carried out in an economic terminology of imports and exports, or the production and
circulation of values, and it indeed created visible continuities between the cultural and the
industrial and economic field. Thus, I would argue, the useful films of the Ministry of the
Interior largely participated in this trend of nationalist self-aggrandisments with their claims
of Romanian primacy in the industrial field.
(b) Given the actual circumstances of the Romanian industry during the 1970s, the films
which specifically address cases of industrial espionage that are fend off or prosecuted by
the economic counterintelligence department, are understandably vague when it comes to
detailing the specific inventions that foreign spies target in socialist Romania. However, the
 Studies in Eastern European Cinema 9

issue only very seldom remains a mere MacGuffin, meant to only generally showcase the
various ways in which one can mishandle important state secrets. Instead, the topic most
of the times serves to project a very concrete aspirational image of the local communist
political project in foreign affairs, in other words: it offers and ideal geopolitical self-­
representation of the regime in its specific historical context. Three points in particular stand
out in defining this stance: the Romanian state’s participation in the technological race of
the Cold War, its ambition as a notable player in international politics especially by devel-
oping a fruitful relationship to the Global South and its manoeuvres to tackle the impeding
energy crises with measures that frequently also conflate with ecological concerns.
Thus, the films indeed show Romania first wanting to be perceived as a champion of
technological innovation. This was in fact a fervent desire during the Ceaușescu regime,
which also comes to the fore, for instance, when following the discussion on the question
of cybernetics during the 1960s and 70s. Already in 1966, at the plenary of the Central
Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, the newly installed president Nicolae
Ceaușescu called for an accelerated computerization of the entire communist economic
system, upon which the local press avidly followed up with reports of developments through-
out the communist period. An article in the cultural journal Contemporanul from the early
1980s vividly demonstrated how these reports combined actual documentation with pro-
pagandistic self-presentation, by plainly recounting a largely made-up anecdote: ‘in honor,
esteem and gratitude of the constant preoccupation with the new science, the fourth
International Congress for Cybernetics and Systems in Amsterdam in 1978 unanimously
decided to award the first memorial gold medal ‘Norbert Wiener’ to the President of Socialist
Romania, comrade Nicolae Ceauşescu, a prominent personality of international life, in view
of his remarkable militant activity, consequently devoted to establishing a new political and
economical world order, to the fulfillment of the aspirations of all people, regardless of their
social regime, to peace and collaboration in the interest of progress and human civilization.’20
In fact, the medal was awarded after the congress, upon a visit made to Romania by some
of its representatives, and it was meant as a recognition of the important early contributions
brought to the field by mathematician Ștefan Odobleja. Secondly, the films present the
Romanian state as an important actor in the field of international politics, by for instance
showing Romanian scientists help discover and exploit Uranium mines in Africa. In doing
so, the films only drew an exaggerated picture of ambitions that the Ceaușescu regime
indeed held in its relations to the Global South, corresponding to its so called ‘global turn’
following Ceaușescu’s first large scale tour of the African countries in 1972.21 Of course,
these manoeuvres were in fact frequently driven by local concerns for energy supplies during
the 1970s, as probably most visible with Ceaușescu’s ‘petro-diplomatic’ relationships to
Iran.22 Thirdly, and as a consequence of this, when addressing Socialist Romanian inven-
tions, both the useful films of the Ministry and the fictional spy features of that time often
refer to the quest for alternative energy sources and their ecological exploitation. Thus, we
see local scientists in these films, for instance, working to develop new fuels in the aftermath
of the first Oil Crisis, or build pioneering air-cleaning devices for the industry just shortly
after the Meadows Report and the new wave of ecological pessimism in the 1970s. In brief,
the films paint a wishful picture of unaligned socialist Romania as a global problem solver
and mediator for the world crises of its day.
(c) Finally, the films also deliver an interesting institutional self-presentation of the eco-
nomic counterintelligence department in particular and of the Securitate as a whole. As such,
10 C. FERENCZ-FLATZ

the institution appears primarily attached to the value of socialist legality, pushed by Ceaușescu
ever since his ascension to power in the mid 1960s,23 in an attempt to also wash away the
bad memories of arbitrariness, abuse and terror during the Stalinist period. This point is
strongly emphasized in an article written in Securitatea in 1968 by colonel Filimon Ardeleanu,
at the time a member of the State Security Council, under the title ‘Respecting socialist legality
and establishing truth: tasks of great responsibility for Securitate officers during investiga-
tions’: ‘We can no longer tolerate deeds like those occurring in the recent past, when no
distinction was made between actual enemy activity, directed against the revolutionary con-
quests of our people, and some manifestations stemming from the natural process of a chang-
ing mentality and consciousness of people. In complete disdain of citizen’s rights and liberties,
unjustified measures of deprivation of liberty have then been taken against innocent people
and others have been staged processes which ended with convictions.’24 While such explicit
admissions of guilt are easily proffered in an internal bulletin like Securitatea, they are under-
standably lacking in any of the public films of the Ministry of the Interior. Instead, the films
are quite sensitive to Ardelean’s demand, deriving from here: ‘The citizens of our country
should be convinced that the intelligence officers are the worthy defenders of their legitimate
interests, derived from the revolutionary conquests of the working people, and they must
have total confidence that the harshness of the law will only strike down those that defy the
righteous order established by the people.’25 As a consequence, Securitate officers in the films
are never seen operating outside the strict limitations of the law. They follow strict protocols
and obey procedures to the letter, while even popular espionage thrillers show their heroes
explicitly double-checking for a warrant when performing a house search.
On the other hand, and as part of the same attempt to rebrand the institution during the
1970s in view of the recent reforms of the penal code, Securitate officers in the films of the
Ministry are not just helping enforce justice, but instead they make an elaborate display of
tact and finesse in doing so, in accordance with the novel emphasis on the presumption of
innocence.26 They are not seen fighting and imprisoning the guilty, or prosecuting and
roughly interrogating suspects, but instead they dwell in uncertainties and they ponder
wisely to discriminate guilt from mere involuntary negligence. As such, they control and
monitor from a distance at all time and intervene only minimally in the moment of crisis
most often just to lend a helping hand to all those who are tempted, on the verge of being
led astray, but can still be saved by a firm appeal to their conscience and duty. To be sure,
lending dramatic weight to this official position often goes beyond the mere legal require-
ments in that often Securitate officers in the films seem made to personify the Aristotelian
virtue of equity,27 rather than justice in the sense of strict legality. Indeed, such a virtue fits
perfectly with their diffuse presence throughout the economic sector, which they are not
simply meant to police but to infuse, irrigate and keep functional like oil in the motor. While
the films thus aim to redesign the image of the Securitate workers in the eyes of the public
according to their new legal limitations, they simultaneously also stretch their narratives
to the limit in order to discretely justify their increasingly determinant position in the
country’s economic system.

Conclusion
In one of the articles devoted to the useful films of the local Ministry of the Interior
published for internal use in the bulletin Securitatea, the author, lieutenant-colonel Ion
 Studies in Eastern European Cinema 11

Vlaicu, concludes his plea in favor of this modern and efficient means of instruction with
a reference to Sartre. Educational films such as these, he says, are in a way superior to
language as a means for teaching, learning and communicating information, in that they
ensure, as Sartre showed, a synthesis between knowledge and affect.28 In lack of a direct
reference, one can only presume that the author is here thinking of Sartre’s early inter-
pretation of image consciousness in the Imaginary, which is in his view essentially charged
with affective intentionality to complement for its cognitive lacunae.29 In any case, Sartre’s
understanding of the image as a cognitive-affective synthesis is confirmed in more than
one sense when it comes to the films here discussed. For one, these films most palpably
register the change of tone occurring in the way the institutions of force address the
general public, by no longer just bluntly speaking a language of ideological conformity,
of adversity and coercion, but finding ways to tickle national pride, to ensure a comforting
sense of legality, and mitigating resistance to the all-pervasive presence of Securitate
workers in all sectors of social and economic life among other things. Seen as such, these
useful films can simultaneously serve multiple, and sometimes partially diverging pur-
poses: they inform on legal obligations, for sure, but not only by menacing with dire
consequences or stressing patriotic responsibility, but also by developing a narrative of
trust in the omniscient oversight of economic intelligence officers, who are here to help
and will take care when things get difficult. In doing so, I have argued, these films perform
a threefold act of self-representation: they are a means for constructing national self-­
esteem; they assert the regime’s geopolitical ambition on the international arena; and they
help reshape the image of the intelligence agency itself. Finally, one might argue, it is
precisely in this mix of functions performed by these films that one can find their main
significance not just for film scholars, but for historians of the period in general. Thus,
as a film scholar, one might appreciate the specificities of their peculiar ‘police aesthetics’,30
given that the outcome of these endeavors are indeed spy films which hardly correspond
to genre expectations while being particularly entertaining for the campier tastes of con-
temporary audiences. For intellectual historians of the period, instead, the films appear
as documents irreducible to any other sources in their composite structure and their
capacity to combine multiple discourses, intentions, and modes of address with corre-
sponding registers of affect.

Notes
1. As an interesting parallel to these films, one could consider especially the popular Chinese
genre of ‘fantepian’ films, which also dealt with issues of counterespionage in the early days of
the People’s Republic of China. See for this especially Zhang (2021), Lu (2020, 17–24), Lu
(2017) and Du (2017).
2. See for this understanding of useful cinema as ‘films that work’, Hediger and Vonderau (2009,
9–16).
3. See, for instance, Česálková (2016, 2022) and Tcherneva (2018, 2020).
4. See for this especially Strausz (2020, 2021), Wasson and Grieveson (2018), Lovejoy (2015)
and Vățulescu (2010).
5. Cf. *** (1972).
6. See for this also Ilinca and Bejenaru (2006/2007).
7. Verdery (2018).
8. Verdery (2018, xii f).
12 C. FERENCZ-FLATZ

9. Crăciunoiu (1970, 29).

10. See for this especially *** (1971, 6f).
11. Crăciunoiu (1970, 28).
12. For some examples, see Paraschiv (1970) or Macri and Olar (1971). According to David
Graeber’s famous classification of ‘bullshit jobs’, ‘duct tapers’ are workers hired to simply
patch up structurally dysfunctional organizations, see Graeber (2018, chapter 3).
13. See for this especially *** (1971, 31f).
14. See *** (1971, 35f).
15. *** (1984, 7). For a similar research concerning the cinematographic output of the Hungarian
Ministry of the Interior, see Strausz (2020 and 2021).
16. See Vlaicu (1974a).
17. See for instance the bibliography included in Securitatea 2/42 (1978), 84.
18. See for what follows Rîpeanu (2013, 208–209 and 240–241).
19. See for the following Verdery (1991, 121f and 167f).
20. Altăr (1985, 7).
21. See for this especially Iacob (2019).
22. See Alvandi and Gheorghe (2014).
23. See also Ilinca and Bejenaru (2006/2007).
24. Ardeleanu (1968, 19).
25. Ibid.
26. See Ardeleanu (1968, 21).
27. Aristotle (1976, 1137a32–1138a3).
28. Vlaicu (1974b, 23).
29. Sartre (2004, section 2, paragraph 2).
30. See for this Vățulescu (2010, 20f).

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported by the Romanian Ministry for Research, CNCS/CCCDI – UEFISCDI,
research grant PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2020–0791.

Notes on contributors
Christian Ferencz-Flatz is a philosopher and media scholar. He currently works as a senior researcher
at the University of Bucharest and as a lecturer at the National University of Theatre and Film. He
was the PI of the research projects “Structures of Bodily Interaction. Phenomenological Contributions
to Gesture” (PCE 2020), “Continental Philosophy as a Rigorous Science. Elements of Empirical
Research in Early Phenomenology and Critical Theory” (TE 2017) and „Habitus, Memory, Sediment:
Facets of a Phenomenological Approach to Tradition” (TE 2010), funded by the Romanian Science
Foundation, as well as Senior Researcher in other philosophical and film-scholarly projects. He was
a Senior Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Cologne.
He published extensively in philosophical and film-scholarly journals. Together with Radu Jude, he
co-authored the experimental film Eight Postcards from Utopia (in post-production). His latest
monograph: Critical Theory and Phenomenology. Polemics, Appropriations, Perspectives.
Dordrecht: Springer, 2023.
 Studies in Eastern European Cinema 13

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