November 30, 2009 03:00PM EST
20 Years of Romanian Cinema
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This weekend (December 4-6), the 4th Annual Romanian Film Festival in NYC will take place at Tribeca Cinemas. For a primer on New Romanian Cinema, TFF programmer Genna Terranova interviewed Mihai Chirilov, film critic and curator of the festival.
Police, Adjective
Genna Terranova: Please tell us about the festival's program this year. Why you have chosen to show both new and old Romanian films?
Mihai Chirilov: This year, we have highlighted the best in show from the New Romanian Cinema: films screened/awarded in big festivals (Katalin Varga, Berlin Silver Bear winner; Hooked, which premiered in Venice); films that have a future U.S. distribution deal; great films that didn’t make it to big festivals (Silent Wedding, a big hit in both Romania and France; The Other Irene); a good bunch of short films; and the Romanian submission in the foreign film category for the upcoming Academy Awards—Police, Adjective (which was also double-awarded in Cannes).
This year, we are also using the wide interest in New Romanian Cinema to look back in time and catch up with local classics. There’s a twist when it comes to the old films to be shown this year (The Oak, State of Things, and opening pic Videogram of a Revolution): since 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, all three deal with this topic.
GT: How can an audience who cannot make it to Tribeca Cinemas see these films?
MC: It will be tough to catch up with the new films, except for Police, Adjective, which will be released on December 23. But a companion film series will air nationally on Link TV (and in New York on CUNY TV) in December, made up of landmark titles (12:08 East of Bucharest, Stuff and Dough, and The Paper Will Be Blue) shown at previous editions of the Romanian Film Festival in NYC.
GT: In your opinion, how has Romanian cinema changed in the last 20 years?
MC: “Change” is not the right word: Romanian cinema was literally reborn in the last 20 years. For a decade after the ’89 Revolution, the Romanian cinema looked like a prisoner of the past and kept squirming in its cage without ever noticing that the door was wide open. 2000 was the blackest year in the recent history of the Romanian Cinema, when no films were made. While Romania had gone through a revolution, Romanian cinema desperately needed one in order to get rid of the dusty ballast and make a difference on the national and international movie scene. The present time required its own chroniclers, these new filmmakers brought along a fresh vision and an innovative visual style that captured the attention of a worldwide audience. Ironically, this new generation of filmmakers also became responsible for some of the best films dealing with the past.
Stuff and Dough
GT: What can you tell us about the New Wave of great Romanian Cinema we have been seeing the last few years? To what is that attributed?
MC: Everything started with Cristi Puiu's debut film, Stuff and Dough, shown in Cannes in 2001. This low-budget film took Romanian cinema out of a black corner and threw it into the international film festival circuit, raising interest and consequently launching the so-called New Wave. It was bound to happen after all those clumsy years of transition, when young filmmakers were struggling to have their voices heard in a cacophony governed by the almighty (but no longer relevant) veterans of Romanian cinema. What happened came really like an eruption and its creative lava is still flowing today.
GT: Where are the exciting new voices in Romanian Cinema coming from? And what do we have to look forward to in 2010?
MC: With few notable exceptions (Puiu studied in Switzerland), most of the young filmmakers active today graduated from the National Film School in Bucharest.
2010 looks more than promising, with brand new films directed by Puiu (Aurora), Andrei Ujica (Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu), Calin Netzer (Medal of Honor), Constantin Popescu, Jr. (with both Principles of Life and Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man), and more.
And don’t miss Cristian Mungiu’s follow-up to his masterful 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days: Tales from the Golden Age is an omnibus project he wrote, produced and co-directed (with four other young filmmakers). It premiered in Cannes this year and is scheduled for a 2010 release in the U.S. through IFC.
The 4th Annual Romanian Film Festival in NYC is initiated and produced by the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, in collaboration with the Transylvania International Film Festival.
Mihai Chirilov lives in Bucharest and is a film critic and the director of the Transylvania International Film Festival, which he cofounded in 2002. In addition, Chirilov works as a curator for the Romanian Film Festival in NYC. He writes for several publications, runs a film and music web site called Rekino, and is coauthor of a book about Lars von Trier, called The Films, the Women, the Ghosts.
His highlight picks for 2009 are Police, Adjective, The Oak, The Flower Bridge, and the surprise film.
Watch the trailer for Police, Adjective:
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