Angel Wagenstein: Art is a Weapon

FAIN: TW-226624-15

Arcadia Pictures Ltd (New York, NY 10014-7216)
Andrea Simon (Project Director: June 2014 to October 2025)

Production of a one-hour documentary on the Bulgarian Jewish filmmaker Angel Wagenstein.

"Angel Wagenstein: Art is a Weapon" is a one-hour documentary on the Bulgarian Jewish filmmaker, war hero and lifelong political activist Angel Wagenstein. A true believer in dreams of a socialist utopia, Wagenstein became a furious critic when those dreams began to crumble. Our film offers Americans a provocative and unfamiliar lens on the everyday reality of Cold War culture in Eastern Europe, and a trenchant analysis of the failures and successes of 1989’s democratic reforms. It is also very much a film about filmmaking, about how film informs our view of the present, shapes our sense of the past and envisions possible worlds to come. In this portrait of a remarkable artist with an equally remarkable personal history, viewers will find moments of recognition, and maybe also some of what advisor Thomas Elsaesser calls the "moral discomfort" that tells us we’re entering interesting territory.