WHY IS HAVING A NATIONAL CINEMA NECESSARY? ROMANIAN NATIONAL CINEMA AND ITS AUDIENCE. Written by Daniel Ovidiu Zimcea Dissertation submitted for the BA (Hons) Film and Television Production. University of Westminster 8th February 2010
Contents 1. National Cinema
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2. The Effects of Politics on Cinema
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3. Hollywood and Globalization
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4. Romanian Cinema and its Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 17 5. Critics and Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 24 Bibliography
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Electronic Sources Filmography
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Primary material
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Personal communications
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1. National Cinema In order to understand what a country’s national cinema is, we must first understand how the term national is used, what its context can be and its importance in use when referring to film as a medium and industry. To be able to do that we need to first define the word nation, which is another term that is casually used in discussions and never really contested. What does nation imply? What makes a nation? Why does national identity even matter in discussing cinema? All these questions need to be answered before going ahead in exploring Romania’s cinema output, because we must understand the unit of measure before getting to see the bigger picture, so that we know what to make of it. This bigger picture is something that may require a good or average knowledge of the history, geography, folklore and customs of the country in question. Understanding these notions will help in finding the importance of having a national cinema and how these – national – films find their way onto screens, how they find their audiences, and, perhaps just as important, how the audiences find them and how long‐term relationships can be created between film makers, their work and their audience. Romania has always been a fragmented country in some ways. Its over twenty million people are in large proportion Romanians, with over ten percent of the population consisting of Hungarians, Romani or Romano, Ukrainians, Germans, Russians and others. Its people have been for long been split up regionally and its territories claimed by the former USSR, Bulgaria or Hungary. As an example, the Republic of Moldova was part of Romania but was taken under the USSR after the second world war. The people there speak the same tongue and have very much the same culture as its other half, a territory within today’s North‐Eastern Romania that is called Moldova. The country – Romania – in its current form is divided into regions that have their own regional dialect and specific culture. Besides these differences, which may not matter as much, as it mostly applies to the rural countryside, Romania has had a history of internal disputes that have roots in the diversity in ethnicity in certain areas – especially Transylvania, which is occupied by both Romanians and Hungarians alike, as this area was once a part of Hungary. In some
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ways, its journey through history resembles that of formerly neighboring Yugoslavia, which was split up into smaller countries although the people inhabiting all of them speak very much the same tongue. “Benedict Anderson puts it quite aptly when, in offering his definition of nation, he says it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”1 and if we were to take that into account, the word provides us with a vague understanding of where the idea of national identity comes from. Therefore a nation is really nothing more than a moral convention that derives from a desire – or maybe just circumstances – for unification in a certain people that descend from the same or a similar culture, that share a history and – sometimes, not always – even a geography. And culture comes from – or grows into – a group of people that grow into their own limits and develop a certain likeness that is common to them and, possibly, them alone. A nation is aware of itself, curiously enough, as the term occurs almost naturally in all sorts of texts and everyday usage. When talking about film, national identity is something that is not often understood and is often overlooked by both national and international audiences. Of course, to a cinemagoer that does not follow the cinematographic output of certain countries or – for example – for an American cinemagoer it may not be relevant to know where certain or all films are made. Understanding the locations used and sometimes, by association, the film’s cultural background becomes unessential although often the film’s essence and message can rely on this prior knowledge on the audience’s part. As David Bordwell wrote in an essay called ‘Doing Film History’ “in the early era of cinema, films circulated freely among countries, and viewers often did not know the nationality of a film they were seeing”2. After about twenty years from the birth of cinema, when globalization was coming into play, decisive factors such as “war and nationalism blocked certain films from circulating. At the same time, the growth of particular film industries, notably Hollywood, depended on access to other markets, so the degree to which films could circulate boosted some 1 2
Susan Hayward, French National Cinema (Routledge, 1993), p. 1 David Bordwell, ‘Doing Film History’, http://davidbordwell.net, 2nd February 2010 4
nations’ output and hindered that of others. In addition, the circulation of U.S. films abroad served to spread American cultural values, which in turn created both admiration and hostility”3. This will be further addressed later on in a separate section. What is relevant from his writing is that in this process which started in the relatively early days of cinema, film was split into two: the mainstream, globalized, Hollywood‐influenced output and the national cinemas that, for audiences not from the same country as the films in question, were usually part of underground art house cinemas. There are exceptions, of course, represented by fairly regular appearances into the mainstream by various French, British and Spanish productions. For someone that does not feel an interest for the country in question, it became sufficient to group countries based on either the fact that they belong to a certain region – like East Europe, the Balkans or Asia and so on, creating a sum of national cinemas based on stereotypical places, characters and action, sometimes simply referred to using the rather new term world cinema – or that they share the same culture or have the same or similar languages – Chinese cinema, Latin cinema. This can often be a problem even though it helps in understanding national cinema better. If the moviegoers do not know much about the specific cultures that are brought to them on screen, it is very likely that they will have a very limited understanding of the film, its purpose and message. An example of this is the film Amintiri din epoca de aur / Memories from the Golden Age (Romania, 2009, dir. Hanno Höfer, Răzvan Mărculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricariu) which was screened in London at the Barbican as part of an event that celebrated twenty years since the fall of the Berlin wall. After the film, a talk with a question and answer session was held with one of the lead actors in the film, Vlad Ivanov, hosted by art and film critic Ben Lewis4 who, because of his occupation, has had to study Romanian as well as East European films and knows quite a lot about 3
David Bordwell, ‘Doing Film History’, http://davidbordwell.net, 2nd February 2010 4 Barbican Centre Website, barbicanconferences.co.uk/film/event‐ detail.asp?ID=9984, 7th February 2010
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East European culture. It was fairly obvious from the reactions and the questions asked – why was that funny? – that most of the people in the audience that were not Romanian did not really understand most of the comedy and some of the drama as well. That may have something to do with the way the film was subtitled, but it was obviously not just that. The way comedy works is different from culture to culture. And sometimes, what’s comedy for some people – on a cultural, country‐wide level – is not comedy for other people. An example would be taken from an article written by Anthony Oliver Scott for The New York Times, where the writer mentions a screening for 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile / 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania, 2007, dir. Cristian Mungiu) during which the director, Cristian Mungiu, was present outside the theatre doors, listening with interest to what the audience’s reactions were. After a while he said that there were a lot of Romanians at the screening that night and when the writer asked why he said that, Mungiu replied “they’re laughing – they always do”5. Of course, even by Romanian standards, the film is definitely not a comedy. What was funny for the Romanian members of the audience was actually the fact that the film’s representation of the period was so accurate to what those days were really like to the common citizen. After the film, in the Q & A session, a woman announced that “that was exactly like [her] dorm room at university” and another asked about where they got certain obsolete brands that would automatically link to the Ceaușescu‐lead communist era. So this is, in a way, situational comedy, it’s a certain surprise to finding things in the film that the audience has forgotten. But the resulting comedy moments are due to the exact difference in culture, which, in this case and many others, translates into familiarity towards certain customs and brands which have made their way into national patrimony, into folklore, which the international members of the audience, of course, did not understand. That is not necessarily a problem however, as this can 5
Anthony Oliver Scott, New York Times, ‘New Wave on the Black Sea’, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20Romanian‐t.html, 7th February 2010
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also be part of the appeal of watching foreign films, even though these films tend to be more intellectually demanding rather than entertaining just for the sake of entertainment, as mentioned before, which may contribute to the low audiences abroad. The reason that these films are made and appreciated – even if it is on a lower scale – is that the audience gets to experience different cultures, different ways of life, different mentalities in a country of their choice in the time of their choice. That has always been one of the main attractions of cinema and this type of cinema will always have its audience, albeit a small one. “Though a Lumière brothers’ screening took place in Bucharest in 1896, Romanian cinema development was slow and sporadic. (…) Romanian cinema won its first international accolade (first prize at Venice) with Țara Moților / Land of the Motzi (Romania, 1938, dir. Paul Călinescu)”6. This chapter and the next aim to find out how cinema became something that can bear the attribute national in the early days and what Romanian national cinema was and is today. As the term national can be defined by comparison with other nations’ cultures, Romanian national cinema will be contrasted with French national cinema, as Romania’s national cinema – even now, after gaining some recognition – relies heavily on French film making and its success with French critics and audiences. This can be seen in the recent success of film makers such as Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu and Cristian Nemescu, all three winners of important awards at the highly regarded Cannes International Film Festival, thus bringing Romanian cinema to the foreground, into the eye of the media and, perhaps more importantly, the possibilities of distributing their films to new audiences worldwide. When investigating Romanian national cinema, a few basic, natural and important questions first came to mind that would try to clarify what is national about film in general and when cinema becomes national. Discussing when this identification of a film having a certain nationality comes to place is vital to realizing 6
R. Taylor, The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema (British Film Institute, 2000), p. 198
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whether there is a case of a country even having a cinema of its own. What if the film is self‐funded or its budget comes from other private means? What if some of the crew are not the same nationality? What if the language is not one to be spoken in that country? And what if the film makers are of a certain nationality and yet they make films in countries other than their own? The nationality of a film can sometimes be determined by the nationality of its crew and cast, the origins of the film’s financing and by the language or languages that are spoken throughout. These issues, however, are to be analyzed later. The issue of Romania belonging – not really geographically but morally – to the Balkans is also something that needs clarification. Because of the proximity in culture and geography to Serbia – former Yugoslavia – and Bulgaria, Hungary and even countries that were part of the former USSR like Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, Romania is often confused by an international audience with these countries. For those unfamiliar with the language, Romanian will sound – depending on the actors and their characters – a bit like Russian, Italian, Polish and so on. The culture and people may share similar customs and temperaments, but the differences will not always be clear to general audiences other than the countries’ in question. Also important in finding out what national cinemas represent to their corresponding countries and why or if it is important to have a national cinema is how the film industry is structured. It is important to find out what makes this structure and relationship between the film makers’ work, the audience or market and government’s support work. In Romania, film making is currently aided by the existence of the Centrul National al Cinematografiei / National Cinema Centre which has existed under the name of Oficiul National al Cinematografiei / The National Cinema Office since the 1st of September 19387, four years after the National Cinema Fund Law has been passed on the 9th of July 19348. Some time after the second world war ended, when Romania turned communist, the Minister of Arts and Information signed and started applying a Decree which nationalized the cinema 7
Centrul Național al Cinematografiei, http://cncinema.abt.ro, 6th February 2010 8 ibid.
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industry and regulated the commerce of cinematic products. This is when the country’s long period of socialist cinematography began, which is something that is again debatable because socialist cinema meant Romania was going to be thrown in with the other socialist countries in the USSR block. This was not an issue of geography, it was more so an alignment of similar cultures, which further blurred the boundaries between what a nation is and how to separate these – again, to the international eye – increasingly similar countries. Unsurprisingly, audiences for Romanian cinema were much larger in the communist period which means that there was a rather stable internal market that worked in both providing and creating demand. That means that national cinema was in some ways successful, unlike it seems to be nowadays after the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, so, starting 1990. Before that year, there was little import from western cinemas compared to nowadays when the situation is almost opposite to that of the dictatorship periods, because, with the rise of capitalism and rapid globalization, Romanian national film seems to be more and more neglected, perhaps – and this may be a bit much – oppressed by the huge force that is Hollywood. Financing for films made before the 1990s came from a state subsidy system set up by the communist party, which was – after 1990 – adapted by the National Cinema Centre to serve submitted projects that can be approved and supported through a yearly contest, which is nowadays often contested by film makers and critics alike. To start an article on the Centre – provocatively entitled ‘Boiling Points – CNC 2006’ – Alex Leo Șerban, a highly regarded contemporary film critic, wrote that “Cristi Puiu did not keep his calm and said that he does not need the Centre’s money. It’s his right. But, at the same time, it’s our right to say that his absence from the Centre’s winning list is absurd and it conflicts with common sense. It’s our duty to protest that trash will continue to be made from CNC money.”9 So, as always, there is a need for problem solving in regards to how cinema works. And possible solutions will be presented and discussed later in a separate section. 9
Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009), p. 52 9
2. The Effects of Politics on Cinema An interesting and rather commonly known fact is that nationalism – perhaps more specifically and relevantly ultra‐nationalism, so, Fascism, Nazism and the like – came into play in both the way the world sees itself and, consequently, art after the two world wars. Nationalism is, put rather simply, a reaction to the effects of globalization, which is again something that has been happening at – for some more nationalist people – an increasingly alarming rate in the 19th century. So, these are all fairly new ideas that have come into recognition at around the same time that the photographic and, later, cinematic arts appeared. When the new art started taking its place in the globalization process, the Russians, Germans and Italians more noticeably saw its potential and began using them to create nationalist film. Which means that they found one ore more important aspects of cinema that lead to the apparition of a different kind of cinema that would be recognized as national cinema: the audience for it – or them as, obviously, there are more than just one – would often be a home, national, audience and – very important – it could unite a people through use of their common culture and ideals. Thus, the new medium became one of the main means of influencing people into believing the idealist views of the government, turning nations into production machines, into armies and so on. As it is well known all of this lead to two long worldwide wars – not the apparition of cinema, of course, but this attitude and the rapid spread of new ideologies through the media. The outcome of these wars would change international relations and world order forever. Hollywood is where it is today – at the top of the ‘film chain’ – almost as a direct result of the wars. Due to the fact that the United States participated in the wars largely on foreign soil, its economy was not as deeply affected as the rest of the world’s has. Due to these economical problems, the world cinema was now undermined and forced to remain under the reign of Hollywood, which was actually for a long time now a leading force in this particular field. Therefore, globalization could not be stopped and there would always be some kind of tension – on both a creative and an economic level – between national cinemas worldwide and the melting pot that is Hollywood.
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As mentioned before, the fact that Romania turned communist after the second world war affected cinema, as communism or any dictatorship did anywhere else really. It affected it in both good and bad ways. Politics tends to affect a people’s mentality and tolerance in often unexpected ways. What’s interesting is that during or after rough times some of the best art comes through and these struggles are actually beneficial to creation. An example would be former Yugoslavia’s cinema output after the second world war and after periods of tension inside the country. Films and film makers such as Ko to tamo peva / Who’s That Singing Over There? (Yugoslavia, 1980, dir. Slobodan Šijan), Podzemlje / Underground (France / Federal Republic of Yugoslavia / Germany, 1995, dir. Emir Kusturica) and Lepa sela lepa gore / Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Federal Repbulic of Yugoslavia, 1996, dir. Srđan Dragojević) are proof of just that. Romania was characterized by three dictatorships, as Marian Țuțui wrote in his Orient Express – Filmul românesc și filmul balcanic / Orient Express – Romanian Film and Balkan Film: “the personal dictatorship of King Carol the second (1937‐1940), that of Marshal Ion Antonescu (1940‐1944) and that of Nicolae Ceaușescu (1965‐1989), who was, starting 1967, President of the State Council and as of 1974, President elect”10, until he was beheaded in December 1989, immediately after the Revolution. All in all, that makes 52 years of dictatorship. It wasn’t always as harsh as it is said, but freedom of expression was, indeed, heavily affected for about half a century. And the arts, especially cinema which was still a relatively new art that had its golden age during those years in the western world, were crippled and challenged in such ways that a lot of the time Romania seemed absent from the corresponding scenes. A few films did indeed make it to international film festivals and cinemas, especially the Cannes International Film Festival or the Moscow International Film Festival. The same film would not be successful in both places however. Cannes cared about and rewarded vision while in Moscow nationalist expressions were more important. Films and film makers such as Pădurea spânzuraților / Forest of the 10
Marian Țutui, Orient Express. Filmul românesc și filmul balcanic (Noi Media Print, 2009), p. 213
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Hanged (Romania, 1964, dir. Liviu Ciulei), Reconstituirea / The Reenactment (Romania, 1968, dir. Lucian Pintilie) and Mihai Viteazul / Michael the Brave (Romania / France / Italy, 1970, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu) – which is the one that made it to the Moscow Festival and was also nominated for the ‘Golden Prize’ – came through. The Reenactment is a special case that will be further addressed and referenced later as it is a special case in Romanian cinema, especially for the time that it was made. It was released during the communist years, in 1968, and ran almost in complete secrecy for about a month in a cinema without having a premiere or the advertising that films like Sergiu Nicolaescu’s nationalist epics would have because of them being approved by the party. The Reenactment was one of the few films that attacked the dictatorship in a relatively direct way that were actually made in the country during those times. It was filmed in Sinaia, Prahova, in the mountain side of Romania. The film was based on a novel written by Horia Pătrașcu, who was actually part of the initial crew that were supposed to make the educational video around which the film’s story revolves11. Films like this one were simply not making it to the surface – they were not shown – if they were made, because of the tight noose the authorities were keeping on people that tried to express themselves, to have a voice. The Reenactment is probably the best example there is of that. It was banned by the dictatorship almost immediately because its accuracy in depicting the system’s faults and, “on an artistic level, objectivity was already a sign of dissidence”12. The film was financed and distributed by Filmstudio București, which is the production company that also helped make his debut film, Duminică la ora șase / Sunday at Six (Romania, 1965, dir. Lucian Pintilie). The decision to debut with this film which is known to be one of the party approved films, is one of the compromises that he had to make at the time. What is interesting about the film is that this “impeccable and revolutionary film – for the little history that Romanian film making has – is that it is at the same time conformist, false and full of lies as far as its content goes: a sort of – keeping 11
Informația Cluj Nr. 37, ‘Horia Pãtrascu: În Reconstituirea am dat tot ce am putut ca prozator’, http://informatia.dntcj.ro/1999Sep14, 25th January 2010 12 Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009), p. 13
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proportions in mind – Das Dokument vom Reichsparteitag 1934 / Triumph of the Will (Germany, 1935, dir. Leni Riefenstahl), the pro nazi documentary. However, he had this great idea to put him off the suspicion that he was a communist himself: he tells the story of the outlaws from the 1930s in Nouvelle Vague style. It was as if he was delivering his membership card back to the communist party wrapped in stylish, capitalist paper”13. It was often that, in order to make the films they wanted to make, film makers had to go abroad. Țuțui wrote that “evidently, the films that showed the true face of dictatorship were made abroad and without making explicit references to the regime in the maker’s country of origin, they used allegory and satire – like Croaziera / The Cruise (1981, dir. Mircea Daneliuc) or Concurs / Contest (1982, dir. Dan Pița) and Faleze de nisip / Sand Cliffs (1983, dir. Dan Pița) – or were made after the fall of the respective dictatorships under the conditions of the removal of censorship”. Even so, films made abroad had short‐lived success, if they did, because of the problems discussed before regarding the films not having an audience that can relate to what they were seeing, with the necessary knowledge about Romania’s cultural heritage and, of course, they didn’t make their way to their designated audiences back home. In a way this so called isolation produced some of the best cinema Romania has ever seen, because, of course, there was little to no import from western cinemas. Television practically didn’t exist and the radio that people were actually listening to, Radio Free Europe, was supposed to stay underground. All of this meant that whatever was produced between its borders – even though it may have been nationalist and nationalism isn’t something that all people would like – had some of the highest audience numbers ever, and that’s in part because of this extensive use of cinema as a means to display propaganda or even counter propaganda, which was never as explicit as it may have been in neighboring countries such as Hungary or, at the time, former Yugoslavia. It was always subtle. Or rather, almost always as some, shall we say, more rebellious films were made with a more direct message aimed straight at the heart of the system. Such a film was the aforementioned 13 Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom 2009), p.347
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Reenactment. As far as nationalist epics go, Sergiu Nicolaescu was the audiences’ and the party’s favourite director. He directed, besides the acclaimed Michael the Brave, other best‐selling historic epics such as Dacii / Les guerriers (Romania / France, 1967, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu) or comedies such as Nea Mărin miliardar / Uncle Marin, the Billionaire (Romania, 1981, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu). According to an all time ‘Top 10’ based on figures released by the National Cinematography Centre that was published in August 2005 by the Romanian newspaper Cotidianul, Uncle Marin, the Billionaire, Michael the Brave and Dacii occupy the 1st, 3rd and 4th spot14. Some of the other top grossing films included are Columna / The Column (Romania / West Germany, 1968, dir. Mircea Drăgan) and Ștefan cel Mare / Stephen the Great (Romania, 1974, dir. Mircea Drăgan), both films that romanticize the country’s great leaders and battles of the past. The other films are audience‐friendly comedies, love stories or films based on popular novels, almost all done with the support of the party and the state. Because of the difficulty of making the films that they wanted to make, some film makers and artists managed to escape – or were exiled – to countries like France or the United States. Film makers such as Radu Mihăileanu, director of Va, vis et deveins / Go, See, and Become (France / Belgium / Israel / Italy, 2005, dir. Radu Mihăileanu) and of the recent Le Concert (France / Romania / Italy / Belgium, 2009, dir. Radu Mihăileanu) – who emigrated as a student because of the limited opportunities inside the country – or Lucian Pintilie, who was denied work by the Communist party after making The Reenactment and had to emigrate to France. Pintilie came back to direct De ce trag clopotele, Mitică? / Why Are the Bells Ringing, Mitica? (Romania, 1981, dir. Lucian Pintilie), which was again banned and only released nine years later, in 1990, with the fall of the dictatorship. As a rather unrelated observation that links to the ideas of what national is that were discussed before, it may be relevant to point out that Lucian Pintilie – who is considered one of the best Romanian directors of our time due to the notoriety of and despite of his still difficult to find, still unreleased films – was born in Tarutyne, Budjak. The city 14
Andrei Gorzo, Bunul, răul și urîtul în cinema (Polirom, 2009), p. 31 14
used to be part of Romania and has become part of Ukraine after the second world war as a result of the fragmentation of the Romanian country as a result of its participation in the first and second world wars15. 3. Hollywood and Globalization For quite a long time now, Hollywood has undeniably lead the film industry not just in the United States or North America, but on a worldwide scale. After the first and second world wars, the American film production – together with the country’s economy – did almost the exact opposite of what the rest of the world was doing. It flourished and dominated cinemas and audiences everywhere. Of course, not instantly, but because of the United States’ participation in the war, it was not as hard to recover from loss as it was – and in some cases still is – in other countries around the world. Because of this rapid recovery and growth, it is normal that its influence has been felt in films made in just about any country that has a cinema. An interesting thing that one may come across in casual discussions about films is that if a film becomes successful nowadays, it can seen as a Hollywood‐influenced make, either respecting a Hollywood type of character development or story, employing ready‐set aesthetics and timings that have been standardized and perfected for almost 80 years now by the Los Angeles based film making community – or, perhaps more appropriately, industry. If not that, the film will at least be compared to a Hollywood film because these standards are so easy to accept. Nowadays, the audiences are – to some degree – trained in Hollywood film so that when they see something that moves away from that it can either feel like a bad, maybe disastrous film or a fresh, good, maybe amazing one. Everything that’s not made in Hollywood is judged in relation to Hollywood. It brought the audience increasingly perfected films made to fixed moulds for genre and National cinema seems to try to move away from that. 15
Bărbulescu, Mihai et al, Istoria României (Corint, 2007), p. 77 15
Taking all this into consideration, it was somewhat normal for aspiring film makers in Romania to want to achieve the same kind of effect on their home audiences – and, if possible, not only that. This is actually how globalization works, and this was something that was especially supported during communism, when film was more of a utensil for the power hungry communist – or in other countries’ cases fascist, Nazi – leaders rather than an art medium to be appreciated by fans of art. So the supporting communist party simply had to step in to help create and run this mini‐industry in Romania, using soviet ideas and American, hollywoodian techniques. Filmstudio Bucuresti and Romania Film produced Sergiu Nicolaescu’s epics and, surprisingly enough, both of Lucian Pintilie’s first films – Sunday at Six and The Reenactment – before the differences between his beliefs and the higher authorities’ kicked in and he lost their support, which will be further discussed later. What is interesting about that period is that, compared to other countries that were run by a dictatorship – like Korea, which Ceaușescu was very inspired by during his visit in 1971, after which he tried to bring the same hardship model back to his own country – Romania was in some ways more liberal, which allowed for this kind of cross‐over in idealism to happen. Romania’s leader then, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was rather respected by the American president Richard Nixon16 and had a generally much more laid‐back image abroad compared to other communist leaders because of his official visits to the western world, in which he came across as a somewhat good leader and that was sometimes seen and felt inside the country – for example, people would, during less difficult periods, trade music from the west or such things like pirate and original merchandise was sold. Sergiu Nicolaescu was perhaps the most prominent film maker of that time, making the crowd pleasing films that were Michael the Brave, The Dacians, etc – the two examples are actually the films that “helped inspire a new emotional Romanian
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TIME Magazine, ‘RUMANIA: Enfant Terrible’, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907041,00.html, 20th December 2009
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nationalism”17 – that gained him and Romanian cinema some recognition abroad, most especially in the dictatorial circuit. He is one of the few Romanian directors that have made epic films depicting wars and battles and heroic figures of the past, which is where the aforementioned nationalism comes into play. It is debated whether he is, in fact, worthy of such acclaim as film makers Lucian Pintilie, Mircea Daneliuc and Liviu Ciulei were and still are much more favoured by the critics18 and international festivals. The three have all won recognition and awards at the Cannes Film Festival. 4. Romanian Cinema and its Audience In today’s Romania, Communism is oftentimes accused of crippling many attempts at artistic manifestations through the inception of censorship and through The Securitate’s vigilent eyes, then the country’s secret service which was founded August 30th 1948 with the aid of the Soviet Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, commonly abbreviated NKVD, which was the public and secret police organization under Stalin. Supposedly, the “first political film made without being influenced by ideologies and censorship”19 was only made in 1993 by the same Sergiu Nicolaescu. Before the Ceaușescu‐led regime was beheaded on the 25th of December 1989, film had a different path to follow under the president and the communist party’s rule, which made it difficult for artistic expression to flourish. Film was found to be a very influential means of propaganda by the party and it’s been obvious for quite some time with the apparition and effectiveness of films such as Battleship Potemkin (Soviet Union, 1925, dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein) for example, and communists believed that the ideas and messages of the country were considered far more important than the artist’s, so they put together a censorship system to filter rebellious or wrong messages. Many improvisations and sacrifices had to be made in order to get 17
Richard Taylor, The BFI Campanion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema (British Film Institute, 2000), p. 169 18 A.L. Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009), p.67 19 ibid., p.219
17
any message across to the viewers without it first being detected by this system. Censorship was used in a different way then: whatever did not respect the party’s interests and was trying to move away from the formulaic approach was cut out or modified so that it corresponded to the new belief system. Use of metaphor and foreign terms was not uncommon for the artistic world back then and, usually, such language would go past the under‐read members of the censorship system. A fortunate release is the aforementioned The Reenactment, a drama that quite openly discusses the misuse of power and incompetence that was made during the days of the Romanian liberalization and separation from the politics of the Eastern Communist Bloc. It was played, as the actor George Mihăiță – that played the role of Vuică – recalls, in the Luceafărul Theatre and “it was brought in through the back door of the theatre where it screened for about a month with no questions asked and after that it was taken off just as unnoticed by authorities. However, someone from the audience said this film should be locked in a room and the key thrown, so then how could one expect this film to have had a real premiere?”20 The audiences were always there, too, ready to hear whatever their great leaders had to share with them. The films of communist Romania were made – or rather remade, with the film maker’s opinion sometimes altered to meet the Securitate’s recipe – into educational videos, as propaganda, always bending to the rules, that is, if the film maker wasn’t already a communist himself. Examples of such films can be the films of Sergiu Nicolaescu, one of the former favourites of the National Cinema Centre. Films such as Michael the Brave and, curiously enough, the aforementioned post‐communist uncensored Oglinda / The Mirror (Romania, 1993, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu) both speak of great leaders in the country’s past, humanizing them just enough for the audience to understand them and glorifying them above what any history book would tell readers. Oglinda is about Marshal Ion Victor Antonescu, a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and war criminal during World War I and World War II. In Alex Leo Șerban’s words, the film is a “false historic 20
Silvia Kerim, Formula AS, ‘Galeria vedetelor’, http://www.formula‐ as.ro/1998/332/galeria‐vedetelor‐21/galeria‐vedetelor‐112, 7th February 2010
18
fresco that tries to rehabilitate a controversial figure; Oglinda lets everyone down, except for the Marshal”21. Films like these tried to restore the image of the country’s leaders and past, sometimes trying too hard to make them appeal to the audience, trying to humanize them. Audiences were quite high back in those days because cinema was more of an escape from the real world than it is today and, almost ironically, the films made then were much more appreciated as well by its destined audience, and some of them are to this day, but by fewer numbers that have remained faithful to their country’s film output. Audiences in today’s Romania are much smaller for Romanian‐ made films, and some of the reasons have something to do with the so called New Wave, which largely consists of neorealist film, critically speaking. Leo Șerban wrote in his 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc / 4 Decades, 3 Years and 2 Months of Romanian Film that he “didn’t see this so‐called New Wave coming”; he doesn’t “call it a new wave, but neorealism”22. Now, it is important to mention what this neorealism really is, as neorealism is something that can be related to the more known Italian Neorealism that was actually influenced by the French New Wave, Communism and humanism. Because of the topics that they discuss, the films of the Romanian New Wave would better fit into the social realist sphere as they explore and display stories in a naturalistic way, trying to emphasize content without resorting to stylistic means that would distract from the story. This translates into long shots, fixed camera positions and performance based film making. This set of characteristics that unifies Romania’s more recent films is only now coming into usage because of the long period of dictatorship which denied artists to experiment within the periods of cinema that western countries would go through. So it is just now that the Romanian film makers can grow up and try to catch up with all of those phases and tell all of their untold stories.
21 22
Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom 2009), p. 221 ibid., p. 55 19
After the events surrounding December 1989, film makers and artists, in general, became obsessed with the theme of revolution, rebellion, difficult times and the – perhaps overwhelming – idea of going from communism to democracy. Also, most of the films made in the last twenty years have a very minimalist feel to them – partially because the budget allows just that – and speak of individual experiences rather than trying to glorify a national event as they did before the fall of the regime. Films such as Hîrtia va fi albastra / The Paper Will Be Blue (Romania, 2006, dir. Radu Muntean), A fost sau n‐a fost? / 12:08 East of Bucharest (Romania, 2006, dir. Corneliu Porumboiu) or the highly regarded 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile / 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania, 2007, dir. Cristian Mungiu) all tell stories of insignificant people and all of them were unexpectedly well received by international audiences. Back in Romania however, Andrei Gorzo, a young critic born in 1978, wrote that “no matter how many awards they win, the realism of some of our best directors doesn’t stand a chance against the audience’s great resistance. Forum discussions on Romanian neorealism are full of statements such as I don’t want to go to the cinema to see real life; I have enough real life the rest of my time”23. To that statement the author could’ve added the international audiences as well, because cinema is widely seen as a form of entertainment, not necessarily enlightenment. An example from American cinema would be the mixed reception that Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (USA, 2006, dir. Darren Aronofsky) received compared to his other, more entertaining work. But this film belongs to a crossing of genres that has yet to appear in Romanian cinema: sci‐fi / fantasy. While films were made about the regime before ’89, none were able to discuss it as freely as they were after the revolution, like Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest. And so, this rapidly became the dominant theme or at least subtheme in most if not all Romanian films made after 1990. The problem – if it can be called so – seen through an average cinema‐goer’s eyes is that the choice of films has now widened, with most of the films coming from Hollywood, and, between a Hollywood – or of course other – blockbuster and a Romanian – sometimes highly 23
Andrei Gorzo, Bunul, răul și urâtul în cinema (Polirom, 2009), p. 95 20
regarded and awarded – neorealist film, when planning a night out, the choice is almost always the blockbuster. The problem with neorealism seen through the audience’s eyes, most of which have experienced the communist era, is that the situations portrayed in these films are far too banal compared to what stories circulated back in the day – before 1989 – and they’re sometimes too depressing to experience again. So most, if not all the films made after 1989, were too naturalistic and too accurate to bear by its destined viewers. Gorzo continues from his previous statement about the audience’s resistance and discusses what art can do for the viewer, saying that “to be connected at the same time and in real time to the brains and nerves of everyone involved in a rather normal situation, which in the case of a film would be some sort of crisis situation, is not just a revelatory experience, it is also one more passionate than any escape – like the experiences gathered from a sci‐fi / fantasy film – and that’s what Romanian neorealist cinema is all about”24. That is something that can be experienced in the achingly long Moartea domnului Lăzărescu / The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (Romania, 2006, dir. Cristi Puiu), where we can understand how the situation is something that the people in medical care go through every day but at the same time we are becoming increasingly worried and annoyed with their ignorance to the patient’s issues, without even mentioning the fact that he is an old man as well and in need for even more attention – the ones that don’t scream are the ones aching most, to paraphrase Dr Kevin Mackway‐Jones in a debate about the internationally adopted rules of the Manchester Triage Group that were made to determine the priority, so who needs help most urgently when coming into a hospital, based on a set of simple questions – which the characters violate almost completely. And today’s Romanian cinema – in the same way – does not scream, yet it has proved efficient in affecting audiences that are not familiar with the topics discussed in the mentioned films. What the Romanian New Wave did, ultimately, best is that it brought this new interest back in the Balkans and pointed it at the former communist country that previously had no cinema for the international audiences. The problem now is 24
Andrei Gorzo, Bunul, răul și urâtul în cinema (Polirom, 2009), p. 96 21
that it needs to find a balance between audiences at home and audiences abroad. Which, amongst other things, means that more cinemas – buildings, screens – need to be restored, built or reorganized, because the “approximately 30 functional cinemas for 22 million population”25 will not cope with the demand, if such an unexpected thing should happen between its borders, and will only help the audience distance itself from going to see films in cinemas, thus increasing piracy and decreasing production leaving little headroom for experimentation, such as delving into other genres as discussed before. Alex Leo Șerban wrote that there is a “need to come up with a new kind of cinema – as an attitude – somewhat social – thematically – and quite poor – expressively – so a kind of economic cinema, in all senses of the term [and] no matter what the audience – that feels quite alienated by the brutal realism of these films – thinks, Romanian film can’t be anything else but minimalistic. Any other formula is escapist”26. Something that has happened in nearly all countries that have been released from the rule of oppressive governments was now happening there as well. A New Wave of released pressure and tension coming out of the people that have been through the regime was emerging. Some started making music, some theatre, some film and some tried to forget. So this new cinema had to find a new audience – and it did – in western territories where, through screenings at festivals such as the highly regarded Cannes International Film Festival and winning awards and the everlasting battle with critics, it made its way into releases in western cinemas. Year after year, starting 2006 when director Cristi Puiu and his The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu received the ‘Un Certain Regard Award’ at the Cannes Festival, films coming out of Romania would make their way into French, British, Italian, American as well as other cinemas, keeping interest alive for the bleak, minimalist, depressive and inexpensive neorealist film. Leo Șerban says that “if we were to look back at where this originates, we will meet the same Cristi Puiu at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001 with his debut Marfa și banii / Stuff and Dough (Romania, 2001, dir. Cristi Puiu). He didn’t 25 26
Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom 2009), p. 185 ibid., p. 137 22
receive anything to come into the spotlight, but both him and his film were very well received by audiences – as usual, better internationally than in his own country”27. The film maker has also had a tremendous amount of misfortune considering his film’s distribution in Romania and even abroad as the National Council of Cinematography did not see the film in the same way or the director’s ability to resurrect the country’s stagnation in cinema and were actually irritated by him. It’s worth mentioning that the establishment’s favourite director until recently, Sergiu Nicolaescu, director of Michael the Brave, one of the former communist country’s biggest box office successes, bringing as much as 13.330.000 people in cinemas28, while his The Dacians brought 13.112.000 people in to see it29 – in the country alone – is still getting funding nowadays which he uses to make mediocre, uninteresting films. As Alex Leo Șerban put it, trash keeps getting funded, while promising film makers are waiting in line for their first chance at doing something with their talent. Or as Andrei Gorzo wrote at the start of his review for Nicolaescu’s latest film, “Sergiu Nicolaescu is not an actor and he is not a director – Sergiu Nicolaescu is a child” only to end the same review by saying that “the prominence of his personality in our cinematography is the joke that a sad era is still playing on our audiences”30. Of course, it is arguable that, if Nicolaescu managed to bring such great box office results before, then he must continue doing whatever he’s doing because it works. The problem is it was working and it has stopped working for a long while now. Something happened to that formula for success and it’s called the fall of the iron curtain. After the fall of the communist regime, Romanian cinema had to change quite dramatically. As mentioned before, a lot of Hollywood import started circulating, and the yearly production of Romanian feature films has decreased quite dramatically, with less than ten made every year, with a
27
Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009), p. 56 Andrei Gorzo, Bunul, răul și urâtul în cinema (Polirom, 2009), p. 44 29 ibid., p. 43 30 ibid., p. 87 28
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record nine films released in 2002, “record, obviously, if compared to the years 2001 or 2000…”31 5. Critics and Criticism Cinema would not be as important as it is today if it weren’t for people that love it, but also, for people that oppose it in one way or another. People that criticize it, that constantly try to define that which is good and that which is bad, trying to define and also inflict good taste on audiences and, more importantly, on film makers. One of the reasons why the Romanian film output is so low in both quantity and – sometimes – quality may be that there are not enough good or dedicated critics to fight off the bad content. This does not mean that the films are bad. It simply means that there is not enough published work in journals, magazines and papers that would create the necessary hype so that an audience would be made into wanting to go see the few films that are made – and that prove to be good every now and then, just as it is the case with cinema anywhere really. A rather unrelated example of what criticism does, even though it does not come from a professional film critic’s point of view, is what happened when Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was released in Romania. The Orthodox church blamed the film and its makers of making abortion seem like it is a good or acceptable thing. Because of the opposition and negative reviews given by the church, people obviously did the exact opposite of what they were told went to see the film. As it’s too well known, bad publicity is still publicity. A natural curiosity that will itch people making them want to find out what the bad thing about the film is or just how bad the film really is like and to make up their own mind about it comes to life when such remarks are made. While the film still divided the audience into people that like – or rather love – it or hate it, that is something that happens with most films. So the fact that there were larger audiences and the criticism that it received was quite abrupt – should be 31
Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009), p. 33 24
read as exigent, harsh and divisive – did not change the fact that people have different tastes. This simply made even more people go see the film with a different, initial, point of view, with a set of values that they heard of or read from reviews that were either positive or negative. Then they went to the cinema to see and review for themselves. This attitude does not only help the film makers, but it also helps the industry find its way to the hearts of the audience members, it helps understand the market. Of course, taking this interdependence into account, this means that Romanian cinema would – through this – become more commercial perhaps, especially if it will again adopt this Hollywood system that has been mentioned before. However, national cinema is not necessarily something that needs to be commercial, looking to come out of the art film group, which in contrast tries to challenge the minds of its audience. Of course it needs to sell, otherwise it would not exist or it would die out, but it does not need to sell out. A good example of selling out would be any of the Dracula films. These horror films – or comedies in some cases – are usually Hollywood made. The subject, however, is something that comes out of Romanian folklore and, interestingly enough, this subject has perhaps too rarely been touched by Romanian film makers. To go back to the main idea, it is essentially the way that the stories are told that would have to change into more accessible formats that more people would relate to – so, Hollywood formats. This is what Sergiu Nicolaescu’s films did. Films made in his period, before the 1990s, had such high audiences not just because of the reasons mentioned before, but also because of the fact that the market research was done. The films were made for peasants, for a general audience, for crowds, not for individuals. In some ways, because of this, it can be said that all commercial cinema is communist, to return to politics, and that national cinema is capitalist. Of course there are a lot of contradictions that come with that statement, but the idea is that film making is in essence a capitalist practice. The people that make films make money – sometimes. The more money comes in, the more production and the bigger the industry, due to reinvesting into the practice. Which is essentially what communism did and why it
25
was flawed, although it may sound like a productive system. The general idea was that everyone is equal, that we should all be the same – in the same way an audience member is not really an individual, but a number to how market research works. That meant the same jobs for everyone, the same income for everyone which is similar in some way to the idea of genre recipes: if it does the same things the last successful film did, it will bring in the same profit. But a balance can’t be obtained that way. The higher authority would always have more benefits – a better job, a better income – which is the way that capitalist system is structured. Why is this investigation relevant? Because national cinema is meant to be made for individuals, for smaller audiences, for intellectual audiences. The films that usually make a national cinema tackle difficult subjects, as is – and was always – the case with Romanian New Wave cinema that has been made in recent years. This escape from the corporate, formulaic and crowd pleasing film – romantic comedies, horror films etc – is very much needed. As is a cinema that experiments with storytelling and audiences. That is, in part, how the French New Wave, the Italian neorealist film and British social realism came to be and all of these waves have an influence on commercial film. National cinema is needed by Hollywood, in conclusion, because that is where it draws its formulas and that is where the film makers and talent that contribute to it often come from: national cinemas, world cinema. Writing on an online film discussion forum, Alex. Leo Serban gave four suggestions, which are explained in more detail below – suggestions that he does not fully agree with in retrospect32 – on how to improve Romania’s national film production. He pointed out that: 1. Films should only be made by directors of up to 35 years of age – with the exception of Nae Caranfil. The reason is that the audience that still goes to the cinema these days is a young one, so it must be the target audience and, in consequence, the directors have to be on the same page as their audience. 32
Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009), p. 93 26
2. The American test screening system should be implemented, which means that the film, once completed, would be shown to a diverse audience that would share their thoughts on it. 3. The producer has to be a producer and not the director’s caterer or handyman. This would mean that, once the film is completed and has had its test screenings, he would need to have the guts to cut into living flesh. Whatever he does not agree with, he needs to make sure is taken care of before the film is released. 4. The director and screenwriter should be two different people. There should perhaps be a team of screenwriters that would have the possibility to change the film in a substantial way as the film is being made. The problem with these suggestions is that they move away from what national cinema is – and perhaps, should be – and they point to a much more commercial terrain that, admittedly, Romania might need to at least try out but for the way cinema works in recent years, especially in Romania, it would not be of very much help as cinema‐going audiences continue to be smaller and smaller. The low number in cinema screens in Romania that has been talked about before is due to people’s disinterest in going to the cinema as the rating system is not respected and it’s much easier to watch films in your own home, without having children in the same room with you watching films that should not be seen by their age group, giggling away and making a mockery of things33. This is something that is a general complaint that resonates in the general press, online forums and even with film makers themselves, because the rating system – although criticized itself – is not really respected in the country. That may not be one of the main reasons why this is happening, but it is one of the reasons that makes going to the cinema seem like more of a task than something people would want to do with their spare time. This goes hand in hand with the increase in piracy, because the audiences are not really lost as it has been said. People do watch films. They just don’t watch them in the cinema anymore, they 33
This is something that I have read in various sources and that has occurred in various discussions carried, which may not have the same form as the one given here, but carries the same message.
27
would rather download the films onto their computer and watch them at home with an atmosphere and degree of comfort that is entirely up to them. And besides, “even the kind of films that don’t have much demand circulate without any problem on the internet, so there still is a demand.”34 The question that would follow this comment is: will there continue to be a satisfactory supply over time if this continues to happen, taking into consideration the already low budgets for Romanian cinema and the just‐as‐low number of films being made every year? Another reason why national cinema is and will continue to be important is that it involves a mechanism of promoting one’s own individual personality and beliefs in the context of the culture of a country and, in a way, filtering by a home audience for further distribution. That may not be accurate enough however. If, for example, there is a set of ten films made on a yearly basis, all films would compete against each other in attracting larger audiences and critics on their side, but not necessarily for the purpose of money making, which may not work if the supply issue mentioned earlier would become a problem. If they fail to do so, there must be someone to stop them from succeeding any further or to correct, to punish their incompetence and that is where the film critic comes in. That correction suggested by reviews and low audiences will lead to self‐education for the next batch of films. Every bad film experience is a lesson not just for the people involved in the making of the film in question, but also for the competing films, their makers and the audience. But there must always be someone to punctuate the failures recognized in the film. There’s a funny saying that circulates in artistic communities – and not only – in Romania that punctuates this need for critics and criticism well: “Romanians are born unhappy, they criticize their whole life and they don’t die until they make everyone around them as miserable as they are.” Romania has a problem when film criticism comes into question. Of course there are film critics, but there are few to no means of getting their message across to a larger audience. There is currently no film journal that would be available to the 34
Andrei Gorzo, Bunul, răul și urâtul în cinema (Polirom, 2009), p. 33 28
general public and very few dedicated magazines. One of the best post‐communist culture magazine – perhaps – entitled Re:publik ceased to be released country‐wide after appearing on a monthly basis for a few years. Even during the years that it would be available, it would be very difficult to find. If it was successful at any point, it must have been in the capital, Bucharest, because distribution ceased for other cities35. A lot of magazines have a film section in which critics can post reviews, but that may not be enough to stimulate larger possible audiences. Alex Leo Serban has recently released a few books, so did Andrei Gorzo and Tudor Caranfil – which is one of Romania’s most appreciated film critics of our time and before the fall of the dictatorship. To put things in a relatively simple manner, books don’t get read as much nowadays. It’s not news and if they do, they’re not film critics’ books. What’s interesting is that the number of writers and publications on Romanian cinema both inside and outside the country is always proportional to the size of the industry. And that makes perfect sense, because of things discussed before, but also because if there is something to write about, it will be written about and if not, then it will not. Alex Leo Serban wrote that “Romanian cinema has been – and I’m afraid it still is – under the unfortunate influence of Tarkovsky style soviet cinema, producing the same kinds of directors haunted by chimeras that show a disliking to story, intrigue, dramatic structure. A certain part of film criticism that favours poetry and symbols encouraged them despite some appearances. Anyway, the target audience that disliked mediocre American films – because those people don’t waste time, they tell stories professionally – was on their side. And the result is a cinema that doesn’t exist. The only things that exist are good intentions, but, as we’ve seen, they tend to become tear‐jerking cataclysms and hyper‐thesis experiments. Or not even that…”36 Romanian national cinema, although dysfunctional in terms of discovering or exploiting its potential commercial value has always had its uses. It doesn’t matter if its influences are unfortunate or constructive, the films made were always of some interest to a small group of people. Telling stories or expressing struggle through 35 Rekino, http://rekino.ro, 6th February 2010 36
Alex. Leo Șerban, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009), p. 21 29
these films was perhaps just as important as creating socialist realism and nationalist epics. They all represent a Romanian national conscience and are relics from times past. Perhaps having a national cinema is just as important as keeping a diary or making a photo album of your life to stack on top of your parents’ and grandparents’ albums. It is evidence that the nation exists or existed. [10108 WORDS]
30
Bibiliography Bărbulescu, Mihai et al, Istoria României (Corint, 2007) Bratu, Lucian, Drumul spre artă al cineamatorului (Editura Meridiane, 1990) Caranfil, Tudor, Istoria cinematografiei în capodopere. Vîrstele peliculei. Volumul I. De la Stropitorul stropit la Rapacitatea (1895‐1924) (Polirom 2009) Cook, Pam, The Cinema Book (British Film Institute, 2007) Fulger, Mihai, 'Noul val' în cinematografia româneasca (Editura ART, 2006) Gorzo, Andrei, Bunul, răul și urâtul în cinema (Polirom, 2009) Hayward, Susan, French National Cinema (Routledge, 1993) Mackway‐Jones, Kevin et al, Emergency Triage (Blackwell, 2006) Sava, Valerian, Istoria critică a filmului românesc contemporan (Editura Meridiane, 1999) Secolul 21, Filmul (Uniunea Scriitorilor din România, 2001) Șerban, Alex. Leo, De ce vedem filme. Et in Arcadia Cinema (Polirom, 2006) Șerban, Alex. Leo, 4 decenii, 3 ani și 2 luni cu filmul românesc (Polirom, 2009) Taylor, Richard, The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema (British Film Institute, 2000) Țutui, Marian, Frații Manakia și imaginea Balcanilor (Noi Media Print, 2009) Țutui, Marian, Orient Express. Filmul românesc și filmul balcanic (Noi Media Print, 2009)
31
Electronic sources Anthony Oliver Scott, New York Times, ‘New Wave on the Black Sea’, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20Romanian‐t.html, 7th February 2010 Barbican Centre Website, barbicanconferences.co.uk/film/event‐detail.asp?ID=9984, 7th February 2010 Centrul Național al Cinematografiei, http://cncinema.abt.ro, 6th February 2010 Cinemagia, http://cinemagia.ro, 25th January 2010 David Bordwell, ‘Doing Film History’, http://davidbordwell.net, 2nd February 2010 IMDb, http://imdb.com, 7th February 2010 Informația Cluj Nr. 37, ‘Horia Pãtrascu: În Reconstituirea am dat tot ce am putut ca prozator’, http://informatia.dntcj.ro/1999Sep14, 25th January 2010 Rekino, http://rekino.ro, 6th February 2010 Silvia Kerim, Formula AS, ‘Galeria vedetelor’, http://www.formula‐ as.ro/1998/332/galeria‐vedetelor‐21/galeria‐vedetelor‐112, 7th February 2010 TIME Magazine, ‘RUMANIA: Enfant Terrible’, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907041,00.html, 20th December 2009.
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Filmography 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile / 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania, 2007, dir. Cristian Mungiu) A fost sau n‐a fost? / 12:08 East of Bucharest (Romania, 2006, dir. Corneliu Porumboiu) Amintiri din Epoca de Aur / Memories from the Golden Age (Romania, 2009, dir. Hanno Höfer, Răzvan Mărculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricariu) Battleship Potemkin (Soviet Union, 1925, dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein) Columna / The Column (Romania/West Germany, 1968, dir. Mircea Drăgan) Concurs / Contest (Romania, 1982, dir. Dan Pița) Croaziera / The Cruise (Romania, 1981, dir. Mircea Daneliuc) Dacii / Les guerriers (Romania / France, 1967, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu) Das Dokument vom Reichsparteitag 1934 / Triumph of the Will (Germany, 1935, dir. Leni Riefenstahl) De ce trag clopotele, Mitică? / Why Are the Bells Ringing, Mitica? (Romania, 1981, dir. Lucian Pintilie) Duminică la ora șase / Sunday at Six (Romania, 1965, dir. Lucian Pintilie) Faleze de nisip / Sand Cliffs (Romania, 1983, dir. Dan Pița) The Fountain (USA, 2006, dir. Darren Aronofsky) Hîrtia va fi albastră / The Paper Will Be Blue (Romania, 2006, dir. Radu Muntean) Ko to tamo peva / Who's Singing Over There? (Yugoslavia, 1980, dir. Slobodan Šijan) Le Concert / The Concert (France / Romania / Italy / Belgium, 2009, dir. Radu Mihăileanu) Lepa sela lepa gore / Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1996, dir. Srđan Dragojević) Marfa și banii / Stuff and Dough (Romania, 2001, dir. Cristi Puiu)
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Mihai Viteazul / Michael the Brave (Romania / France / Italy, 1970, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu) Moartea domnului Lăzărescu / The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romania, 2006, dir. Cristi Puiu) Nea Mărin miliardar / Uncle Marin, the Billionaire (Romania, 1981, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu) Oglinda / The Mirror (Romania, 1993, dir. Sergiu Nicolaescu) Pădurea spânzuraților / Forest of the Hanged (Romania, 1964, dir. Liviu Ciulei) Podzemlje / Underground (France / Federal Republic of Yugoslavia / Germany, 1995, dir. Emir Kusturica) Reconstituirea / The Reenactment (Romania, 1968, dir. Lucian Pintilie) Ștefan cel mare / Stephen the Great (Romania, 1974, dir. Mircea Drăgan) Țara Moților / Land of the Motzi (Romania, 1938, dir. Paul Călinescu) Va, vis et deveins / Go, See, and Become (France / Belgium / Israel / Italy, 2005, dir. Radu Mihăileanu)
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Personal communications Ceaușu Alex, 15th November 2009, Which films made during communism are still relevant today and how do they relate to the films of the New Wave? Danciu, Bogdan, 21st January 2010, How does Corneliu Porumboiu avoid genre films? Iovan, Alex, 21st September 2009, Why is The New Wave relevant to Romanian audiences? Păroiu, Diana, 2nd December 2009, National cinema: Screening 12:08 East of Bucharest to a British audience
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