Eight Postcards from Utopia

Mad Men" did much to romanticize the art of the ad agency, not all advertising is quite so elaborately or expensively conceived, though, as "Eight Postcards From Utopia" makes clear, even the most utilitarian or workmanlike commercials have a cultural value of their own. Assembled wholly from a vast archive of post-Revolution Romanian TV ads, Radu Jude and Christian Ferencz-Flatz's witty, chaotic documentary carves out a tumultuous 30-year-plus history of a country transitioning from socialism to capitalism - all via how everything from beer to laundry detergent to banking is pitched to the viewing public.