28/08/2013 - The director's follow-up to The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu about the iconic British band is meant to start a trilogy on mass culture

Andrei Ujica (photo) builds on the structure of The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu [+see also:
trailer
film profile], screened out of competition in Cannes 2010, for his follow-up, Beatles, a mixture of fiction and documentary which explores a weekend in the life of the famous British band: August 13-15 1965, when they were in New York, at the beginning of their second US tour.

Starting with the extensive footage TV channels like ABC, CBS and NBC used to cover the event, Ujica will re-create the weekend, but the film will also use two personal points of view: two teenagers, without knowing each other, come to New York to be part of the historical music event. They have two Standard 8 cameras and the director will use amateur footage from the era as if the images were shot by the two teenagers. The two characters will be part of the final film, their scenes being shot with actors over two weeks next summer, on location. Ujica plans to use computer generated special effects in order to explore, in images stylistically coherent with the already available footage, the New York of the 60’s as seen by the two teenagers.

Almost one year and a half already into production, Beatles is edited by Dana Bunescu (The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu) and is expected to be ready at the end of 2014, a scheduling that takes advantage of the 50^th anniversary of the legendary concert that brought Beatlemania to North America. The film is produced by Mandragora Movies and will cost at least €1m, depending on the costs of the rights for the songs and the footage used in the film.

For Ujica, the perfect international debut for his film would be the 2015 edition of the Cannes International Film Festival, with the two remaining Beatles in attendance. The film is the first part of a trilogy on mass culture, with a second production approaching another popular topic, football.