Romanian cinema has been intriguing and delighting audiences in recent times and this special Focus On Romanian Short Films reveals the skill and unique artistry of Romanian film talent. In collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute and Andrei Gorzo, we are delighted to present these very special programmes of short films.
Most of the great and the good Romanian cinema that has emerged since 2005 (the year of Cristi Puiu’s trail-blazing The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu) has been built (often very rigorously) on a particular set of aesthetic principles which can be traced back to Italian Neorealism and to André Bazin’s theoretical writings on the subject. It is a cinema of quotidian events, more typically filmed in observational long takes rather than inflected or analysed through editing. Big dramatic points tend to receive no special highlighting, co-existing on an equal footing with small or marginal actions. The stance is unsentimentally humanistic, coolly alert, tense with moral awareness. Far from naive, this realism, at its best, has been fraught with thoughtful concern for matters of cinematic form and, increasingly, for the moral, philosophical and political questions raised by any attempt at realistic representation. Seen from the point of view of the subject matter and taken as a cycle, the films begin by covering what can be described as classically Neorealist ground, collectively depicting a frayed and battered society, haggard from totalitarian rule and from the harsh new economic realities that followed it, while also chronicling the consolidation of a new middle class.
All the characteristics of this New Romanian Cinema are powerfully showcased in our selection of 13 shorts. The programme includes work by some of the strongest individual personalities in the movement – Cristi Puiu’s quietly punchy Cigarettes and Coffee, made right before he changed the course of Romanian cinema with Lăzărescu, or Corneliu Porumboiu’s sure-footed Liviu’s Dream, made in preparation for his highly original first feature, 12:08, East of Bucharest. Films like Radu Jude’s The Tube with a Hat, Marian Crişan’s Megatron and Alexandru Mavrodineanu’s Music in the Blood are, perhaps, among the most reminiscent of old Neorealist values, while a film like Peter Kerek’s Adultery is representative of the gradual turn towards more bourgeois subject matter and more overtly formalist concerns. While the films seldom stray very far from the same core of stylistic norms – the most striking exception being Marilena from P7, whose director, the late Cristian Nemescu, inclined more towards an idiosyncratic form of pop cinema –, this stylistic formula lends itself to the good old-fashioned suspense of Anca Miruna Lăzărescu’s Silent River, as well as to the comedic intergenerational fireworks of Paul Negoescu’s Derby. – Andrei Gorzo
Andrei Gorzo teaches and researches at Bucharest’s National University of Drama and Film. He is a member of the International Jury at this year’s festival.
Subjective Portraits by Alex Galmeanu
Alex Galmeanu is one of the most celebrated young Romanian photographers. His latest exhibition features well-known Romanian actors and directors.
An artist with a winning combination of superb vision, personal verve and riveting technical brilliance, Alex Galmeanu was born in 1978 in Bucharest. Since 1992, he has been published regularly in Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Elle, Glamour, InStyle along with international advertising campaigns.
Mon 07 Nov | 2:00pm | Triskel Christchurch
FOCUS ON ROMANIA Programme 1
Tue 08 Nov | 2:00pm | Triskel Christchurch
FOCUS ON ROMANIA Programme 2
Wed 09 Nov | 2:00pm | Triskel Christchurch
FOCUS ON ROMANIA Programme 3
