Category: World of Culture

Close to the center of the city of Ploiesti, in Prahova County, 60 km north of the capital, hidden behind a line of blocks of flats typical of the communist period, lies a white house of the early 20th century, which houses the Caragiale museum, dedicated to the greatest Romanian playwright.

He wrote what are maybe some of the best known plays in Romanian literature, a fresco of Romanian society in late 19th and early 20th century, which passed the test of time, and are relevant to this day. We crossed the threshold of the white house to talk to the museum curator, Monica Bostan, and asked her about the history of the place:

“The museum opened on January 30, 1962, by the effort and care of Professor Nicolae Simache, who opened most of the museums in Prahova County. It was an homage paid by the people of Ploiesti to our great playwright to celebrate the 110th anniversary of his birth. Caragiale was born on January 30, 1852, in Haimanale, a village in Dambovita County, which now bears his name. He moved with his family in the city of Ploiesti when he was 6. All his school years, the most beautiful in our lives, he spent here, in Ploiesti.

We asked Monica Bostan to tell us more about the great writer’s youth:

“In the second grade, there was the memorable visit to Ploiesti paid by then ruler Alexandru Ioan Cuza, and it was at the school where Caragiale was studying. His teacher was Vasil Dragosescu. He evoked the moment in his writing ’50 Years Past’, naming him his spiritual parent, saying that his Romanian language, such as it was, he owes to his teacher. Here in the museum we also find Zaharia Antinestu, his French language teacher, of whom he said that it was the model for the character Zaharia Trahanache from ‘A Lost Letter’. In 1864 the SS. Peter and Paul Gymnasium was set up in the city, and the writer signed up for the 2nd year, and graduated in 1867, the fifth of eight students. We have the transcript from his last year of gymnasium, school year 1866-1867. There, written in red, we have the school situation for pupil Caragiale, who, as I said, graduating fifth of eight pupils, was not a top student, his grades in Romanian classes were not very good, as we would expect, but had very good grades in French, math, and history. He later taught French at a private high school in Bucharest. In the building of the Peter and Paul Gymnasium we now have the Prahova County Museum of History and Archaeology, and there we can see a plaque informing visitors that this is where Caragiale studied. After graduating this school, Caragiale took another year of school in Bucharest, and then went on to study the art of declamation at the Bucharest Conservatory of Dramatic Arts with one of his uncles, Costache Caragiali, one of his father’s brothers, who had some of the first theater troupes in our country, which we can actually call the founders of modern Romanian theater. Even the national poet, Mihai Eminescu, was a prompter in Caragiale’s uncles’ theater troupes, and that started their friendship.

Curator Monica Bostan led us on a brief tour of the museum, highlighting some of the exhibits:

“In the second room we reconstituted the universe in the houses that Caragiale had lived in. it is well known that the writer never had a house of his own, he always rented, hence his novella ‘Looking for a Home’, it seems as if he was always in the search for an ideal home. On the wall we have the crystal mirror with a rosewood frame that belonged to the writer, as well as a small round coffee table, as well as other furniture, a table, chairs, a sofa, the carpet on the wall also belonged to the writer, as well as the two original paintings, the china pitcher and the beer mug with a cover, these all belonged to the writer. Here we also have a portrait of poet Eminescu, which is painted on glass, a rare procedure for its time. Even though it is well known that the two had differences at some point, in spite of the fact that they were friends since their school years, upon Eminescu’s death, on 15 June 1889, Caragiale dedicated to him the article ‘Nirvana’, in which he described Eminescu as a fair angel descended from an old icon. Here in the hallway we are met by the photos of Eminescu and Caragiale in their adolescence, another, lesser known photo of Caragiale at the age of 20, when he was studying under his uncles at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and a bust of the writer by sculptor Ion Jalea. We also have caricatures, costume sketches, a gallery of portraits with some of the actors that gave life to some of his characters on stage, and a portrait of his daughter, Ecaterina, in maturity, made by painter Rodica Maniu. Above we have the painting of his house in Bucharest, which still exists on Maria Rosetti street, which opposite has a statue of the writer, moved a few years ago from the National Theater. It has a plaque that reminds passers by that this was a home for Caragiale and his family around the year 1900.

At the end of the tour, Monica Bostn told us about the museum schedule:

“Information about the activities at the museum, and lesser known information about the exhibits in our patrimony can be found on our Facebook page, and on the website of the Prahova County Museum of History and Archaeology. You are eagerly awaited to get to known the fascinating world of Caragiale, along with his memorable characters.

This year, actor Marina Palii was one of the 200 artists selected to the Berlinale Talents 2021 program, as part of the Berlin Film Festival, between March 1 and 5, 2021. Participants applied from 65 countries across the world, and were shortlisted from among 3,000 candidates. Romania was also represented at this edition by producer Anda Ionescu and director of photography Boroka Biro.

We talked with Marina Palii about the roles that marked her career and her participation in the Berlinale Talents.

“For me, the Berlinale Talents was a very important event for me, because it is one of the most important events in the world. Which is why being selected for it is a sign of great appreciation. After taking part in the summer in the Sarajevo Talents event, I decided to apply for this workshop. Due to the global situation, they found this compromise, and all the workshops were shifted to Zoom. In this way I shared the workshops with filmmakers from all over the world, from Chile, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, the entire world map moved to Zoom, and that was very interesting, in spite of the lack of contact. It was a novelty to be able to talk to colleagues from all corners of the world from your room. I took part in some workshops that were about three hours a day, which familiarized us with the Alexander Technique. The workshops were held by two trainers, Kristof Konrad and Jean-Louis Rodrigue, and they have been practicing this technique for a long time. The two held their workshops mostly in the US, and there are many actors already working on their characters using the Alexander Technique. Overall, it is about a series of movement and breathing exercises. I worked on scenes from famous films with colleagues from other countries on Zoom, which was completely new, but we adapted, and pushed things in a very good direction.”

Among the arguments given by the jury in selecting Marina Palii for the 2021 Berlinale Talents were “The ease of interpretation in a role both French and Romanian, and the ability to build strong character”. The event was part of the 71st edition of the Berlin International Film Festival. Marina Palii graduated from the I.L. Caragiale National University of Theater and Cinema Arts. Her specialization was Polish and French, and she is an actor with the Ioan Slavici Classical Theater of Arad. She has been in four movies: 6.9 on the Richter Scale, by Nae Caranfil, 2016, Crime and Punishment, Jon Gostin, 2017, La Foret dargent, produced by ARTE France, by Jon Gostin, 2017, and Malmkrog, by Cristi Puiu, 2020. For the latter, Puiu got the Best Director Award in the Encounters Section of the Berlin International Film Festival. Marina Palii told us about the role that made her famous, Olga, in Cristi Puius Marlmkrog:

“After taking part in the film festival in Berlin last year, things took a really good turn. In both Sarajevo and Berlin I applied with a video, a collage from the movies Malmkrog and La Foret dargent, and I think that counted towards the selection. Getting back to Malmkrog, it was a great experience, it helped me a lot. Basically it was my debut in an auteur movie. Malmkrog and Olga were a tour de force, which helped me shed any notion of what I thought was film acting and character building, because in this film I didnt apply anything I learned in school. It is true, in school there is no module for film acting, there are only some workshops, or odd courses with guest filmmakers. Over here in school they dont do solid training in film acting, and each one of us learns by imitating colleagues. This made an even greater challenge playing Olga. Working with Cristi Puiu brought me close to some limits I had to overcome. I am referring to physical resilience, first of all, but it also didnt help that my part was entirely in French. In addition, it is a fairly tough text, but there was some improvisation, which I enjoyed very much. The fact that the director granted me the freedom to improvise, and he put his trust in me, that was a great joy, I felt it as a moment of maximum freedom. It is extraordinary if one proposal you make out of ten is accepted. In summary, Olga was a character that I worked very hard for.”

Marina Palii is also part of the cast of the show School and Family, a theater project built on texts by Caragiale, by director Cristian Ban, staged by the Ioan Slavici Classical Theater of Arad.

Three Romanian filmmakers attended the Berlinale Talents workshop this year, held at the Berlin Film Festival between March 1 and 5, 2021. They are producer Anda Ionescu, director of photography Boroka Biro, and actor Marina Palii. Our guest today is Anda Ionescu, producer of four Romanian films that premiered in 2020 at international film festivals: Mia Missed Her Revenge, by Bogdan Theodor Olteanu, Otto the Barbarian, by Ruxandra Ghitescu, We Against Us, by Andra Tarara, and Our Father, by Andrei Dascalescu.

Anda Ionescu came into contact with cinema as an industry while she was studying in Denmark, at Aarhus University. While there, she founded the Aarhus Short Film Challenge, a short film festival meant to encourage students and graduates to make independent films. During that period, together with a few friends passionate by films, she created Film Sense, an association focused on educational programs, and on developing a platform to promote cinema. In 2016, she was part of an international team that worked on a science fiction miniseries filmed in Qatar. After that experience, she worked as a producer on the four films that premiered in 2020, getting involved in their development and financing. We talked to Anda Ionescu about the selection to the Berlinale Talents workshop selection, and about the four Romanian films launched last year, for which she was a producer. Berlinale Talents, an event at the Berlin International Film Festival, brought together this year beginner filmmakers, offering them the opportunity to meet more people of their craft, creating connections, as well as a place to offer them intensive workshops with celebrities. Here is producer, Anda Ionescu:

“It was a week focused on a lot of information, new things, discussions, debates, a very creative week. It is interesting to go into a bubble for 5 days, where morning to evening you are continuously involved in programs, having to choose between available opportunities, and take advantage of them as much as you can. It was a special experience. This experience is important for everyone in the film industry, but more so for the producers, for us it is essential to work with other producers, because sometimes it is preferable to share producing a film between several partners. That is why these workshops and events are very useful, they bring people together, they help you to find collaborators for future projects, it is important to carry things further and take them to the next level. At the same time, thanks to the Berlinale Talents, I had access to meetings and discussions with directors and set designers, and I learned a lot from them. It was an opportunity to chat for an hour with artists such as Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul or documentary maker Kirsten Johnson. I had very important discussions with people you don’t often get a chance to contact, an opportunity for development on several levels.

With Tangaj Production, where she is an associate together with Anamaria Antoci, Anda Ionescu made two independent films, meaning without financing from the National Cinematography Center, the CNC: Mia Missed Her Revenge, by Bogdan Theodor Olteanu, and the documentary We Against Us, by Andra Tarara. Through Alien Film she was delegate producer for Otto the Barbarian, by Ruxandra Ghitescu, and for Our Father, by Andrei Dascalescu, she was principal producer. Here is Anda Ionescu talking about what motivated her to get involved in these projects:

“I think I resonated a lot with the stories and their authors. Before getting to the two projects, those by Andra Tarara and Andrei Dascalescu, I didn’t know I had an inclination towards personal documentaries, but I realized I am attracted by this area. However, all four projects attracted me from the start, I felt they are authentic, and I think the first step is to resonate with the proposals. As a producer, you have to be motivated, to like what you do very much, to believe in the project to make it happen. I wanted to work on diverse projects, and work hard to learn, there was this energy right from the start. And things came together, and I met the right people to see these projects through. I am glad, because I was interested in all these things, I wanted to see how you work on a documentary, I wanted to work with beginner directors, but also with experienced producers, at their second or third film, like Theodor Olteanu and Andrei Dascalescu. So working on these four films was a complex experience, since they are so different. It was intense and demanding at some point, because all these films had their premiere the same year. But it was all well in the end, and I will carry on with the same energy.

The Active Archive project was initiated in 2020 by UNATC, the I.L. Caragiale National University of Theater and Cinema Arts, on the 70th anniversary of its creation. The program so far includes fifteen short films made between 1966 and 1971, made by the first generation of students studying directing and editing after a decade. Some of these films are made by film makers that went on to become famous (Radu Gabrea, Ada Pistiner, Felicia Cernăianu, Iosif Demian, Timotei Ursu, Vivi Drăgan Vasile, Dan Pița, Mircea Veroiu, Nicolae Mărgineanu), and feature famous actors (Toma Caragiu, Mitică Popescu, Cornel Coman, Ilarion Ciobanu).

Andrei Rus is a film critic, professor, and artistic director of the One World Romania Documentary Film Festival, and curates the archive program:

“The Active Archive project was born out of an older passion and concern that I have for the archive, but also out of the interest of a few people from the UNATC leadership. In 2020, the university celebrated 70 years since its creation, and the Active Archive was one of the projects we designed with the rector, Liviu Lucaci, who is looking into various projects to liven up the institution. There was a moment when we asked ourselves how much we knew about the history of this institution. Because there was never any real concern for researching the past of the UNATC, which used to be called the Institute of Theater and Cinema Arts. But this is the institution that generated the majority of professionals in theater and film, at least until the 1990s, which ultimately generated the norm. Meaning that certain principles of making theater and cinema, and certain stylistic norms, derived from this period. I started to watch in chronological order the student movies starting with the 1960s, and last year, at the Transylvania International Film Festival, we started screening a collection of nine short films from the archive of the National University of Theater and Cinema Arts. When I received the invitation to the TIFF I had watched about 200 shorts made between 1966 and 1971. I had an extraordinary surprise seeing these almost experimental movies, movies that dont really resemble the feature length movies of that time. So I made a selection of films that break the norm, films that I believe are able to refresh curiosity for Romanian marginal cinema. And at this moment, student films are marginalized compared with official fiction film, the only kind available on various TV channels. Also, documentary or animation films are scarcely available. What I want to say, in fact, is that there is no one way of making cinema in Romania, which means that there are various Romanian cinemas, as it were. And it is very important to start to explore all these marginal cinemas, and it is essential, before exploring them, to preserve them, to care for them, to digitize them and make them available for research. One of the conclusions, watching the movies in the archive, is that a large part of the avant-garde in Romania was in the only institution where theater and film was studied in the communist period, which I can say was an eye opener for me.”

Over the next few years, the Active Archive will revisit and commence an ample process of digitizing and restoring the entire archive of student film made on 16 and 35 mm support, around 2000 titles. The project also wants to identify and make accessible several types of archive material in the UNATC patrimony: photos, stage design sketches, graduation papers, materials that document student shows made over the seven decades of existence of the institution, as well as management documents that reflect the pedagogical evolution in the arts of theater and cinema.

Here is curator Andrei Rus:

“Short film is a less costly form of cinema, which is why there are more of them. Even in the 1970s, very good years for Romanian cinema, they did not make more than 20 movies a year, while the Sahia Film Studios turned out over 200 short films a year. There was also Animafilm, the animation studios, unfortunately with very low availability. There were also a few hundred cinema clubs, and I am sure that among the movies made in them there had to be many experiments, but unfortunately they were not reaching the public at large. I hope that now, within this new context at the UNATC, where the research department is coming together, and there is growing interest for the archiving area, we want to get people interested, to manage to attract items from personal archive, possibly. This is a big problem for culture in Romania, not just for cinema and theater. It often happens that artists have no one to leave their archives to. Many of these archives are left to inheritors and various friends in the same domain, but they are not necessarily open to researchers. It is very important for centers to open to deal with these archives, there are may examples of famous museums or higher education institutions to explore the archives.”

The Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest opened a novel exhibition- the first multidisciplinary event dedicated to flax. Spinning Flax Into the Future is an integrated event dedicated to this material that bridges the gap between traditional and contemporary ecology. The exhibition integrates art, installations, and performance with traditional musicians and weavers from Maramures, northern Romania, alongside conferences and debates on the circular economy.

The exhibition marks 10 years since the creation of the Patzaichin brand name, supported by the Patzaichin Association, founded by the famous Romanian rower Ivan Patzaichin, who has won numerous gold and silver medals in the Olympics, an association that supports local development in the Danube Delta and other Romanian regions. At the opening of the event, we talked about this very special material with the director of the Textile Museum of Baita, in Hunedoara County, western Romania. Florica Zaharia is also a conservationist with the Metropolitan Art Museum of New York:

“This is an exhibition to which we were invited by the Patzaichin Association, and we were delighted to participate with exhibits from the Textile Museum collection. Flax is a fiber just as important as wool, which, ahead of linen, are the two most important in Romanian culture. Flax is a fiber that we stopped cultivating in the last few years, for various reasons, which we should get back to later. This is an exceptional fiber, that provides us multiple resources. These very important fibers, flax, linen in some parts, and later cotton, have been used for summer clothing, interior pieces such as bed sheets, later tablecloths. Wool, on the other hand, is used during the cold or humid part of the year. Our wool has a certain specificity, in fact the wool from the entire area of the Balkans and the Carpathians, it is a thick strand wool. If someone tries on a flax shirt, or another piece, I am convinced that they will think about purchasing more clothing like that, and they will think twice about purchasing synthetic. It has an exceptional quality, which helps our skin breathe, while protecting us from the elements.”

Florica Zaharia presented us some of the collection they brought from the Textile Museum to the Peasant Museum:

“One of the very important groups of objects is a sampler of fibers, thread, and fabrics — which shows the very complex technological process involved in selecting various qualities of flax, suitable for various kinds of household objects, holiday objects, or other household objects, and clothing, of course. We also brought objects made of flax, such as bolts of cloth. We brought in two shirts, one from the Apuseni area, and a fantastic one from the Padureni area. We show that flax and flax culture has spread throughout the Carpathians area, up, down, and sideways. We also brought in a very important group of objects from Japan. Why do I think that these are extremely important? This is the same fiber processed with different technology, which answers the needs of Asian culture. Strands are not formed by spinning in Japan, they are by weaving the fibers, which results in a fabric like paper, which doesnt have the body of spun flax fabric. What we do at the Peasant Museum and here is to prove the same thing — we always try to place Romanian culture and fabrics in a global context. By understanding other cultures, we understand ourselves better.”

At the opening we spoke with international artist and performer Mircea Cantor, who lives in Paris:

“For me, this exhibition is an homage to all those who used their hands and voices to refresh our memory. These weavers, these artisans from Maramures, these singers, managed to bring us the heritage they got from their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, reminding us how important tradition is, how important roots are. They remind us how important it is to keep this alive, to promote it, to imbue ourselves with these beautiful things. They are the fruit of their labors, shirts, sculptures, wedding songs — all these things make up a precious treasury, which we, here in Romania, still have the chance to preserve. The connecting line is flax, which we all used differently in their own skill set. What impressed me about the Patzaichin Association is the care, attention, and passion for this material. I could say this is a weapon for resistance for the Romanian people. If we look to the past, flax was the material for peasant clothing, for those in the most disadvantaged social layer, and their resilience brought us here. Patzaichin is carrying this forward, showing that something so humble can be turned into something so noble. This is their merit, of continuing to work with factories in Romania, with people in Romania, providing jobs, because they take advantage of this material that is back under scrutiny in advanced contemporary agriculture.”

Mircea Cantor, winner of the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Award in 2011, spoke to us about the future of this raw material, flax, in Romanian society:

“I think we can bet on Romania. We have lots of land, we still have these skills, you just have to invest in people. The political class has to realize that, even so belatedly, there is tremendous potential to develop flax. In terms of craftsmanship, we still have here women in the countryside who know how to weave and spin it, who can cultivate it, and we should be encouraged by economic, political, and cultural policies.”

Since March last year, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the Gong Theater for Children and Youth in Sibiu has initiated a series of online activities and workshops in order to remain active and close to its audience at a time when performance halls were closed.

Adrian Tibu, director of the Gong Theatre: “We continue the series of creative workshops coordinated by professionals. We have painters, sculptors and tailors who aim to develop the imagination of children, starting from the plays staged here, and allow them to have a glimpse of the behind-the-scene activity. Children will be challenged to tell stories with the help of homemade objects, such as dolls made from socks or recycled bottles for instance. At the same time, they will sketch hand-painted pots while children aged 6 to 10 will be challenged to develop their writing skills through workshops on themes from the shows. It is an attempt to reinterpret classic stories and to achieve, in the end, a chronicle of the reality around us. We try to create a world full of joy, to bring some light during a difficult period. We also try to offer them a nice way to spend time with families because both parents and children are invited to attend out workshops, which can give them a starting point to discuss more sensitive topics. Through these workshops, we also want to convince children to spend less time in front of computers and TVs, because it is not healthy for them. However, we want to continue these workshops when we return to a certain type of normalcy, because the feedback received from the spectators is very good, and for us it was essential to keep in touch with them. I say this because theater is, after all, a living institution and we need this relationship between children, parents and actors. ”

The workshops and activities initiated by Gong Theater are designed for children of all age. Adrian Tibu: “We also have closed circuit workshops for kindergarten and middle school children. These are real-time activities held on zoom, with children either at home or in the classroom. At the same time, our actors have a portfolio of recitals from Romanian poems and texts, to help pupils and students take a different approach to the texts for the national assessment exams and baccalaureate. Another type of workshops we hold for teenagers is public speaking. So far, we have had modules only for 12th grade students, in order to prepare them for the baccalaureate, because oftentimes they get overwhelmed during oral exams and cannot use their full potential. These public speaking workshops combine various acting techniques, to help those who are preparing for exams.”

In an attempt to offer an alternative to live performances in theatre halls, Gong Theatre also created a podcast with stories entitled “The menu with whispered stories”. These are stories from all over the world, performed by Gong Theater actors. All recordings are available for free, on teatrulgong.ro, and the list of audio files is updated daily. The first story was a Romanian one, a story about fairies written by Petre Ispirescu and read by Lucia Barbu.

Adrian Tibu: “We tried to bring to the attention of children a universal portfolio because many times these stories are forgotten, are no longer republished or searched for in libraries. Thats how we came up with the idea to create this virtual file that already contains over 150 reinterpreted stories, because its important to keep this connection with our audience, promoting interaction even in the digital environment. When we created this podcast, we thought it was important for children to have a restful sleep, which is why these whispered stories are often used as good night stories. These stories will remain available online for free, just like the workshops, on teatrulgong.ro. I can say that we have a generous virtual library, which is useful to children of all age, because we want an active audience, with critical thinking, who can understand the world around them. And all these stories from more or less distant areas, offer various cultural models that make diversity and reality easier to understand.”

The Gong Theatre resumed its activity with the public starting on Sunday, May 9th. The first show presented on stage since a number of restrictions were lifted has been “Gagaga and others like him”, an interactive educational show with dolls, created by Raluca Răduca, which brings together several stories inspired from universal literature. (EE)

Starting
in late 2020, The Association for the Development of Romanian Film
(ADRF) became the representative for the Romanian film industry, as
part of the European Film Promotion organization, the prestigious
organization that represents the European movie industries. After a
year of absence, Romania is once again present as part of the EFP,
becoming the 38th
member of the network, in order to represent and promote the Romanian
film industry at the European level. The ADRF was set up in early
2017, and is an NGO that supports production and distribution of
independent movies, and aims to develop a new community of filmmakers
and film consumers in Romania. ADRF publishes the bilingual online
magazine Films in Frame, and offers grants in exceptional situations,
aimed at independent filmmakers without resources.

Laura Musat, the
founder of The Association for the Development of Romanian Film, told
us:

We
set up this association in late 2016, shortly after I graduated from
the School of Film, Media & Performance in London. I made the
decision to set up the ADRF, mainly out of a personal need to cover
some gaps in the Romanian film industry, or at least help fill in
those gaps. We have many projects, but the most laudable is the Films
in Frame magazine, which you can find online. It is a daily magazine,
and I can say that I am proud of my team of some of the best film
journalists and critics: Ionut Mares, Victor Morozov, Georgiana
Musat, Flavia Dima, the list can go on. I am grateful to them for
trusting in the project, which we started from scratch, because the
magazine is just beginning, it was launched in October 2019. In Films
in Frame, we discuss all the major movies of the moment, we debate
European and independent cinema, and we have a variety of material,
we try to cover everything that happens. The magazine is also a means
of promoting Romanian film, as well as independent film worldwide,
trying to reach as wide an audience as possible, which we hope we can
persuade to go to a cinema and see a movie that is not an American
blockbuster.

The
Script Contest is the first ADRF project, and was launched in late
2016 as a short film script competition. With each edition, the
competition grew, turning into a workshop and residency for writers
of short film scripts. This year, enlisting was between March 1 and
April 24. Here is Laura Musat:

The
purpose of the residencies is to find writers and to teach them how
to write and develop their talent. Here, in Romania, it is well known
that the most famous directors write their own scripts. That is to be
admired, and some of them are really good. But when writing one’s own
script is mostly a matter of pride, I think it is preferable to call
on a scriptwriter. However, there are so few of them. Because most
directors write their own scripts, I think writers are discouraged,
they don’t know how to break through in this small film industry. Our
purpose with The Script Contest is to find the best writers. During
this residency, which lasts for a week, the people who are selected
get to meet various filmmakers in the industry, which guide them and
provide them with feedback, reaching a satisfactory formula, and at
the end we pick a winner. The best script is then made into a short
film. The residency means seven days of workshops, masterclasses,
debates, and discussions about the scripts, which during this period
are rewritten based on all information received there. The residency
is in Brasov County, in the village of Cobor, where there is no phone
signal, far away from the bustle of the city, where you can focus and
work in peace on your project. At the end of the residency, the
competitors send their rewritten scripts to the jury, which picks a
winner. The Script Contest residency took place last year as well.
Together with our colleagues from the Transylvania International Film
Festival, we managed to carry the projects through to the end, in
conditions of maximum safety. Initially, the residency was supposed
to happen in March, but we moved it to August for safety reasons.

In
Ploiesti, a city 60 km north of Bucharest, you can find a small
hidden away street with a courtyard full of blooming trees, with an
elegant house typical of the area. This is the memorial house
dedicated to Nichita Stanescu, the poet said by the critics to be the
greatest Romanian poet of the modern era. We went to this house,
where the poet grew up, accompanied by the curator of the museum,
Ioana Rosu. She shared with us a few thoughts about the museum and
the poet it is dedicated to, Nichita Stanescu, who lived between 1933
and 1983. She told us about the significance of the place for the
locals and for all Romanians:

I
want to recall and prove that our city, famous for its crude oil
production, has also provided many people of value, such as
playwright Ion Luca Caragiale, actor Toma Caragiu, and poet Nichita
Stanescu. The latter has been promoted heavily since 1986, when the
poetry festivals named after him were started. They take place every
year on March 31, the date of his birth. This happened up until the
year 2000, when we recovered the Stanescu family house, and we could
start the process of bringing him back home. This is the home of his
birth. We were incredibly lucky back then to have his sister,
Mariana, to guide us and advise us in restoring the house the way it
was when the poet was growing up.

We
continued our incursion into Nichita Stanescu’s life going through
the museum and its exhibits, with stories about his childhood. Ioana
Rosu led us through it:

We
have here a few manuscripts, with biographical data, photos,
diplomas, but this is mostly his childhood home. In his bedroom we
have on top of his bed a teddy bear, which was dear to him when he
was a kid. We also have his writing desk when he was in school, and
the upright piano he played when he got back from school. We have a
lot of the family’s belongings, which were given back to be seen
here. The keeper of most objects was his sister Mariana, since he
lived most of his life in Bucharest, even though he was never
officially a resident of the city. He spent his youth there. The most
valuable are the books with dedications, autographs, the prizes. I
would mention the two most important prizes, because the Writer Union
gave him awards for every single volume of poetry. His highest
achievements, though, were the 1976 Herder Award, which he got in
Vienna in 1976, for his volume Elegies, and the 1982 Struga Poetry
Evenings Award, which he got in what is now North Macedonia, a
beautiful golden wreath that is now displayed in a glass case, the
main attraction for visitors. Many a poet has coveted this prize, but
Nichita actually got it. He grew up with a nanny, Ana Silaghi, who
raised and educated him. He was getting piano lessons at home,
starting from the age of 6. His mother, Tatiana, noticed he had an
ear for music. In a radio interview, sometime in 1975, she said that
if he hadn’t been a poet, he probably would have been a great
musician. He had everything he needed, in addition to his mother’s
support. Tatiana Stanescu said that he wrote his first poem when he
was in kindergarten. One autumn day, she recalled, she was cooking in
the courtyard, and she heard him babbling something, and asked him
what he was saying. He recited the poem to her, and she went in the
house to jot it down. She showed it to him when he was older, it was
a poem with a pace and rhyme, written by a preschooler. He was a
feisty kid, a true Aries, a fire sign. In school, his math teacher
said that he was writing epigrams in class, and so he didn’t push him
much in that subject matter, even though many of his poems feature
mathematics, such as The Lesson About The Cube, The Lesson About the
Circle, or Geometry, which some say is a mathematical poem. He had a
great childhood, but also a bad period. He lived through the
bombings, the Americans were bombing the city of Ploiesti and the oil
refineries there, so the Stanescu family locked up their home and
fled. Luckily for them, the house was untouched by the bombs, but the
child wasn’t, some images stuck with him, because in his poetry we
often find images of soldiers, or of burning trees. These things were
imprinted in his memory.

For
the end of our visit to the quaint and beautiful memorial house,
Ioana Rosu told us her impression of the place:

I
am trying to tell people that this is a welcoming place, and many
cross its threshold with the feeling that Nichita is close by, that
he could even be their host. He lived to the fullest, he was a torch
burning bright. He passed away too quickly, but Nichita lived in 50
years what others wouldn’t in 150 years, and that is all that
matters.