On Nov. 17, at 7 p.m., in the Harrington-Peachtree Amphitheater, the Southern Film Circuit will be showing a viewing of “Hotel Dallas,” a story about a Romanian father and daughter duo that are influenced by the American Television show, “Dallas.”

During the 1980s communist Romania, the only show allowed on television is the American show, “Dallas.” Ilie and his daughter Livia are captured by the show. Ilie is a small-time criminal, aspiring capitalist, while Livia is in love with the show’s lead role, Patrick Duffy. Following the fall of communism, Ilie builds Hotel Dallas, a replica of the “Dallas” mansion. Livia immigrates to America, becomes a filmmaker, and directs a movie starring Patrick Duffy. In the movie, Duffy plays a soap opera character who dies in Texas, wakes up in Romania, in a hotel that looks just like home. Livia leads her childhood idol on a genre-bending road trip across Romanian dreamscape utilizing fiction and documentary as she guides him through the failure of communism and capitalism into a realm of ghosts and lost time.

Filmmakers, Livia Ungur and Sherng-Lee Huang, are a wife-husband duo based in NYC. They make films, sculptures, installations, and performances. Their work has been displayed at the National Gallery of Art in D.C., the Stavros Niarchos Center in Greece, Des Moines Art Center, SXSW, Kassel DokFest, Antimatter, Black Maria Film Festival, Montreal Underground Film Festival (Jury Award for Best Film), FIVA Video Art Festival (Jury Award – 1st Prize), and Leiria Film Festival (International Documentary Prize). “Hotel Dallas” is their first feature film.

For more information on “Hotel Dallas,” or the Southern Film Circuit, contact Dr. Terry Barr at gtbarr@presby.edu.

Written by Ashley Cowart, a senior English major from Woodruff, S.C.