Thursday 12 Oct 2006

23.50-01.20, on BBC Four (repeat)

“Why, despite all the shortages, was the toilet paper in East Germany always two-ply? Because they had to send a copy of everything they did to Moscow.” Ben Lewis’ funny and insightful feature-length documentary tells the real history of communism through the jokes of the time.

Director’s statement: ‘I was making a film about Ceausescu, the communist ruler of Romania, and living in Bucharest in 2001. My Romanian AP and his friends started telling me all these Ceausescu jokes, and I thought, I wonder if they told similar jokes in other communist countries. A quick trawl through second-hand book sites on the internet and I knew my hunch was right: there were thousands of jokes! Not all of them sounded funny today, but there was something about even the unfunny ones that seemed funny if one analysed them seriously, as historical documents. That’s really the point of the film - just how serious humour is.’

More details on www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/