Radio România Internațional

Category: World of Culture

  • Romanian Diaspora Artists at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival

    Romanian Diaspora Artists at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival

    The festival is also the birth place of quite a few large-scale projects. At FITS, for instance, you can find out the latest from and see the works of the Romanian artists in the diaspora. Alexandra Badea, Eugen Jebeleanu and Cosmin Chivu, who have been living and working in France or the US, were present at the 25th edition of FITS, with performances featuring the actors of the Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu.



    Young stage director Eugen Jebeleanu has been living in France for eight years, but is currently working both in France and in Romania. In Sibiu, Eugen Jebeleanu stage-directed his first show in a state theatre, Gong Theatre, three years ago. Then he worked with the Radu Stanca National Theatre:



    “I think I have never lost my connection with Romania. I left in 2010 for acting classes, and then I returned to Romania. I began staging performances in independent theatres, then I went back to France, I took my Master’s degree in directing, and travelled back to Romania… This movement between the two places has been constant, I’ve always worked in both countries. And what I want, at least for my own company and the people who work with it, is to develop a more concrete dialogue in this respect.”



    Usually, Eugen Jebeleanu directs his own texts, or the texts of his partner, Yann Verburgh. But at the 2018 edition of FITS, Jebeleanu came with his stage version of Arthur Miller’s “View from the Bridge”, a Radu Stanca Theatre production. With details on that, here is Eugen Jebeleanu himself.



    “I was taken aback by this play precisely because, although it is inspired by a true story from the 1950s, it has great resonance with what is going on today. I didn’t mean my play to be a manifesto, what I meant was to look at the condition of the man who is leaving, at how he experiences his departure to a place where he doesn’t belong, at how he relates to integration or disintegration. And also at the diaspora community, and the hierarchies within that community, which in turn is part of another, greater community… I was interested in how we end up doing unfair and mean things only in order to defend our own square-metre of territory, in how we turn into monsters just to wield power over the others, to control something or somebody.”



    Playwright and stage-director Alexandra Badea has been living and working in France. Recently she has been offered collaboration with the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris, whose director is the very well-known playwright and stage-director Wajdi Mouawad. Jointly with the “Radu Stanca” National Theatre actors, in Sibiu Alexandra Badea staged a show titled “Present perfect”, included in the programme of FITS. Alexandra Badea:



    “I have come to Romania after eight years without any contact with Romanian theatre whatsoever. I was suggested a project with the theatre in Sibiu, Eugen told me that this theatre takes its plays on national tours, and that’s what persuaded me to come. I wrote the text for the actors in Sibiu. It is part of a trilogy I am currently developing at the Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris. In France, I work on what we could call the hidden stories, the untold stories, the events in recent history which have been overlooked a little bit. “Past perfect” is the story of a family retracing half a century of Romanian history, from 1941 in Iasi, to this day, covering the pogrom in Iasi in 1941, and the communism of the 1970s, where some people were informers while the others had to face the consequences. And, above all, it is a text I believe speaks about the young today, who to me seem to be maybe a lot more lucid and much more prepared to look at things differently and to take responsibility for the present in a different manner.”



    For Cosmin Chivu this was the 7th consecutive year at FITS. A resident of New York since 2000, when he got his Master’s in stage directing at the famous Actors Studio School, Cosmin Chivu has staged more than 60 shows in professional theatres and universities in the US, Europe, Australia and Thailand. At present, Chivu is the director of the acting and directing department with the Pace School of Performing Arts in New York. At the FITS anniversary edition, Cosmin Chivu brought the musical “The Rocky Horror Show,” a co-production of the “Radu Stanca” National Theatre and the “Lucian Blaga” University in Sibiu, and a Romanian-French production, “Human States”.



    “This year I directed a show entitled “Human states,” a music and poetry performance, presented twice at the Saint John Evangelical Church. And also this year I brought back “The Rocky Horror Show”. “Human States” started out from music, a music of the soul, with few words, a genre that is not very popular in Romania. It is a story where we witness what happens to us from the moment we are born until we die, with all our pleasures, joys and suffering. I also contributed to the Performance Stock Exchange. For three days running, theatre companies and performing art personalities from around the world came to Sibiu to present their work, to find partners and create projects and relations for the future. I moderated such exchange sessions. Companies from all five continents came, I believe. Participation this year was unprecedented.”



    What prompts Cosmin Chivu to return to Sibiu year after year is the spirit of the festival:



    “It started off from a very generous idea and from a small group of people that thought out an event bringing together creative minds and young artists who wished to share their work experiences with one another. That was in 1992-1993, and I took part in the first editions of the festival while still a student in Iasi. Now it has grown into a world-level event. And being able to witness this journey and to contrast what things were like back then what they are like now, and the effort these people put into it over the years, that is absolutely sensational.”


    (Translated by E. Nasta)

  • ‘The Last Days of the West’, a new volume by Matei Visniec

    ‘The Last Days of the West’, a new volume by Matei Visniec

    What’s wrong with the West? Is the Western world in its final stage
    of decline? Are we seeing the death throes of the Western civilization? Is Western
    Europe going to be Islamized, Africanized or taken over by millions of migrants
    from Africa or Asia? Are we witnessing the disappearance of the white race? As
    a journalist with Radio France Internationale, Romanian playwright Matei
    Visniec is facing questions like these on a daily basis. In his latest volume, ‘The
    Last Days of the West, which appeared at the Polirom Publishing House, Matei
    Visniec has tackled these questions, this time with the instruments of a
    writer, through philosophical fables, short stories and confessions. The launch
    of his volume was another occasion for writer and journalist Matei Visniec to
    meet his Romanian readership.

    One of the meetings, hosted by the Humanitas
    bookshop, was moderated by critic Ion Bogdan Lefter, who also made a
    presentation of the volume.


    Matei Visniec tells us he felt the need to write about these
    things using the prose genre. He has published on this theme before, both
    essays and articles, also at Polirom. He is returning to it now, albeit in
    literary form, and he is not trying to pass judgment or make dark prophecies,
    but to place before us texts that discuss topical themes: ethnic, linguistic
    and cultural diversity, migration, the past and the present, values, reason and
    the excess of rationality.


    Settled in France in 1987, where he has been working as a journalist
    for Radio France Internationale, Matei Visniec told his Romanian readers how he
    lives between two cultures, two professions and two languages, and how a
    topical issue can be turned into fiction:


    I try to save the first part of the day by writing
    fiction, which sometimes is rooted in current realities too. However, in the
    past years I have been mostly interested in depicting paradoxes and dilemmas in
    the messages I get at RFI, in the newspapers I read and in the commentaries I
    hear. So, I’m detecting dilemmas and
    paradoxes in the current reality, just like those who find gold using special
    tools. Because what interests me the most are not the problems of the society.
    Because problems, just like in mathematics, have solutions. Therefore, I am
    interested in dilemmas, because dilemmas have no solutions, and we know that
    from the Greeks. That’s why I am interested in social, human, psychological dilemmas and I believe this is how I started writing the book. I started
    compiling all these dilemmas that I discover in the surrounding environment.


    With his life split between France and Romania for
    more than 30 years, Matei Vişniec says today’s Bucharest sparks in him a
    mixture of pain and joy:

    Unlike all the other European
    capitals that I know, perhaps with the exception of Belgrade, I think Bucharest
    is moving very slow. But I still come to Bucharest with great pleasure, because
    there is so much positive energy, so many people that I like, so much
    creativity. This is an old theory of mine, that Romania has more talented kids
    per thousand inhabitants than other countries have, precisely in order to make
    up for the fact that there are more corrupt politicians per thousand capita.
    So, in an organic manner, the Romanian land strives to balance up the two
    situations, and it creates more talents, more creativity to offset the
    incompetence and destructiveness of politicians. So to me, Romania is, as I
    often say, the place where I come to charge my batteries to fill myself with
    positive energy. It is a launching pad for the playwright Matei Visniec,
    because theatre festivals in Romania are very important. The Sibiu Theatre
    Festival, for instance, is an extraordinary international festival. Also, an
    increasing number of foreign stage directors come to Romania, where they can
    have essential meetings. So Romania has managed to create important cultural pilgrimages.


    Matei Visniec’s plays have been translated and staged in more than
    30 countries. As a writer, Visniec is the recipient of a great number of
    awards. His first such distinction was in 1984, when he received the Romanian
    Writers’ Union Prize for Poetry for his debut volume, The Wise Man at Tea time.
    In 1998, Visniec also received the Romanian Academy Prize, and in 2016, Visniec
    was awarded the Romanian Theatres’ Union Prize for the contemporary playwright with
    the biggest number of plays staged. In France, Visniec was, a couple of times,
    the recipient of the Press Award at the International Theatre festival in
    Avignon. In 2009, Visniec scooped the European Prize awarded by the Society of
    Stage Authors and Composers. In 2016, Matei Visniec’s novel, ‘The merchant of
    novel openings’ was awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature.

  • Act Theatre’s production of “Stage Dogs”

    Act Theatre’s production of “Stage Dogs”

    Being an actor is a wonderful job. Terrible.
    Superb. Ludicrous. Extraordinary. Horrendous. Uplifting. Embarrassing. That’s
    what it is all about in Stage Dogs and the show stands real chances of
    blowing people’s minds. That’s how Florin Piersic Jr. has introduced the show
    he created and stage-directed. Actually the show marks the encounter on stage
    between two very talented actors, who are as renowned as they are charismatic:
    Marcel Iures and Florin Piersic Jr.. As for Stage Dogs, it is a
    production of Act Theatre, the first independent theatre with its own headquarters
    in Romania after 1989. In 2018, the Act Theatre celebrated two decades since
    its establishment. Inspired by David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre, Stage
    Dogs opens the door to the backstage of a performance.




    Make people happy. Make them cry,
    make them laugh, take them as far as you can, make them forget. But make sure
    you never lie to them!




    These words, written by Florin
    Piersic Jr., are uttered by Marcel Iures towards the end of the performance and
    their impact is so strong that words are almost impossible to forget. We asked
    Marcel Iures how easy or how difficult it is for an actor to make an effort not
    to lie to the audience, while on stage.




    No one knows. Many are just
    pretending. And they pretend out of their need to clear up things, to reach a
    conclusion. But it is a calling without conclusions. What I believe is that
    what is fascinating in this show, as it is written by Florin and the way we act
    it, is the fact that a light shines in this dark ditch. On one side there is
    man’s need to create legends, to invent, there are many mysteries, more or less
    justified, and our own notoriety and celebrity. As Florin says in scene 9: we
    get up on stage as mere schizophrenics, we are trembling, we are going
    insane… we have the feeling that we are someone by pretending we are someone
    else. We shiver and have small heart attacks, every night. In fact, we are
    deeply frightened.




    The script of Stage Dogs is
    built as a story between a sacred monster actor and a younger actor. We asked
    Florin Piersic Jr. what needs, desires and quests led to this proposal to
    unveil the spectacle of life from behind
    the stage of a theatre:




    There
    are things that come to bring calm into an area of theatre, the area in which
    people climb pedestals, they look down on you. But in the end, they are still
    people. And it is a good thing to recall that. Because the magic of theatre
    works, it depends on the lighting, it depends on a lot of things. And it is a
    good thing to remember that. Actors are very fragile and unhappy a lot of the
    time, with a regular baggage of things, and a huge baggage of imagined issues.
    The ones that the imagined characters they carry around have. And that makes
    them special. But I believe that certain lines from this show had to be uttered
    in this show, lines that balance the scales. Because I don’t think a certain
    kind of exacerbated enthusiasm is healthy. I am referring to the enthusiasm of
    the audience for the actors. There is a charisma that an actor has, that of a
    superman. This is our impression, but we are all people. And in fact this is
    what the show displays.




    We talked to Marcel Iures and Florin
    Piersic Jr.. after their performance at the Arad New Theatre International
    Festival, the twentieth since its premiere in March. Stage Dogs filled the big hall of
    the Ioan Slavici Classical Theatre. It sells out every time. You may
    wonder if the audience comes there for the actors or for the script. Here is
    Florin Piersic Jr.:




    I was thinking at some point who
    was going to ask the question. Was it going to be just colleagues? Or theatre
    critics? And now I am startled to discover that this hidden world, behind the
    scenes, is interested in this, as long as people identify with these actors.
    And identify inner feelings. And I say: yes, it is possible. And self-irony
    works as a very good weapon.




    In the end we went behind the stage,
    to find out how Florin Piersic Jr. and Marcel Iures worked together in
    rehearsal. Here is Florin Piersic Jr.:




    What was incredible in rehearsal,
    and reflects now in the show, is the fact that we always had available healthy
    laughter, telling each other stories, things relevant to this context, about
    how down to earth actors really are. We told each other loads of things, and we
    were very happy about it. And this helps now, because I believe this show is
    largely a comedy. It is good to know that. I don’t believe in drama without a
    bit of comedy. As it is in life.




    Here is now Marcel Iures:




    It was a good experience, a good
    encounter, we did not simply glide past each other. You can imitate and ruin a
    relationship to preserve your glory, your legend. That is foolish. The idea of
    a clash of celebrities, of names, is terrible. I don’t believe in that. On the
    contrary, I believe in dissolving, because in the end we dissolve one against
    the other or one in each pother. I know that sounds haughty, but this is the
    direction in which the effort runs. This is the basic effort of actors when
    they meet. This is what collaboration means. You can shake hands, to
    understand, and no longer feel ashamed, or fake shyness. In theatre we are laid
    bare.

  • Involution, Revolution and Evolution in Romanian and European Theatre 02/06/2018

    Involution, Revolution and Evolution in Romanian and European Theatre 02/06/2018


    This year’s theme was Involution, Revolution, Evolution, three words
    that mark the way society and theatre help shape reality and build a future.


    Theatre critic Oana Bors helped select the plays that were included
    in the festival. Drawing on her experience, she believes Romanian theatre is
    evolving:






    Oana Bors: Romanian theatre is moving
    forward, albeit taking small steps. First of all, we can notice a
    diversification of topics – we no longer have a social and documentary focus
    which dominated Romanian contemporary theatre at one point. Rather, Romanian
    plays now approach various topics leading to introspection, such as human
    relationships. There is also an evolution in terms of playwriting. We already
    have accomplished playwrights, such as Csaba Szekely, Mihaela Michailov and
    Radu Apostol, who have been working together for some time now… Also Alex Popa
    has been steadily making a name for himself.




    Acknowledgement and prejudice, identity and cohabitation, and above
    all, love… These are the themes of George Stefan’s Story from Transylvania,
    stage-directed by Andi Gheorghe at the Studio Act Multimedia Centre in Oradea.
    The text tells the true story of a mixed Romanian-Hungarian family from Targu
    Mures, spanning several generations.






    The play is about Romanians and Hungarians living together and the
    clashes of March 19-21, 1990 in Targu Mures. The play is bilingual and its cast
    features both Romanian and Hungarian actors. Richard Balint plays Securitate
    officer Stefan Remes, who investigates and eventually imprisons Szabados
    Istvan, played by Kocis Gyula. The interesting thing about the play is that it
    very much resembles the personal experience of the two actors. Richard Balint
    with the details:






    Richard Balint: At any rate, I’m both
    Romanian and Hungarian. My father was Hungarian, my mother was Romanian, and I
    myself have experienced the kind of situation where I got beat up for being
    Hungarian. It was just the state of things back then. In 1990, during the March
    events, I noticed a change in people’s attitude towards us. People who were
    your friends, your neighbors, ended up fearing us. Tension was piling up in
    Cugir.






    In his turn, Kocis Gyula says:






    Kocis Gyula: What personally affected me was that my father was imprisoned for
    11 months in Oradea because he wanted to cross the border. The communists
    locked him up because he wanted to be free.






    The program for this year’s edition of the festival also included
    the production Shakespeare for Ana, brought to Bucharest by the Coliseum Arts
    Centre in Chisinau. It is a documentary show, exploring truth and love, drawing
    on a series of interviews conducted in penitentiaries for juveniles, women and
    men in Goian, Rusca and Soroca villages.






    The play was written and staged by Luminita Tacu, who is well known
    for her interest in documentary theatre. This was not the first show based on
    testimonials for actress and director Luminita Tacu.






    Luminita Tacu: In 2008 I directed the play ‘The House of M’, which included a
    monologue of a woman who had killed her husband. So years later I started
    wondering what the women I spoke to in Rusca prison were doing. We had worked
    together for ‘The House of M’, which deals with domestic violence, and I
    wondered what it’s like to live without love. What is the life of these women
    in Rusca? I knew they have children waiting for them back home, some of them
    husbands, others looking for love. I also knew some of them were looking for
    love in prison. That’s how I got the idea about making a show about love, a
    show about this kind of virtually impossible love. We decided to go to three
    vulnerable penitentiaries. We talked to the inmates, but also to the employees
    in the system. It’s a bloodcurdling play, even for us, because every time we
    get transported back to that world, it reminds us of all those people. Every
    time it fills us with regret and remorse for living in freedom, forgetting that
    somewhere out there, in a world behind bars, there is someone you know, someone
    you talked to about love…






    The
    European Theatre section of the FEST-FDR Festival was represented by important
    theatre companies from Europe. Oana Bors with the details:






    Oana Bors: I am glad the festival has
    been gaining international recognition. There are big theatre companies coming
    to Timisoara. We were honored to have director Milo Rau as a guest, who staged
    a play jointly with the famous Schaubuhne Theatre in Berlin. In turn, Luk
    Perceval’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ was staged as part of the festival in a modern
    reinterpretation produced by Thalia Theatre. Whereas Milo Rau’s play is a
    docu-drama analysis on migration, Luk Perceval’s’Grapes of Wrath’ picks up on
    Steinbeck’s focus on economic hardship and examines the issues of exile and
    identity.





  • “Equally Red and Blue”, a short film by Georgiana Moldoveanu

    “Equally Red and Blue”, a short film by Georgiana Moldoveanu

    The short film Equally Red and Blue was
    the only Romanian film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival that reached
    its 71st edition this year. The festival started on May 8 and came
    to an end on May 19. Directed by Georgiana Moldoveanu and produced by the I.L.
    Caragiale National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, the short film
    was selected for the Cinéfondation
    section of the Cannes Film Festival which is devoted exclusively to young
    talents. This year the organisers chose for this section 17 short films from
    more than 2,400 shorts received from all over the world. 14 countries from 4
    continents were represented in this section of the Cannes festival and 12 of
    the 22 selected directors are women.




    Georgiana Moldoveanu graduated from the I.L.
    Caragiale National University of Theatre and Film and became known in Romania
    thanks to her film Windows that received an award at the CineMAiubit
    festival. We talked to director Georgiana Moldoveanu about her passion for
    film, about how a story can be turned into a film and about her new short film
    presented for the first time at the Cannes Festival:




    I grew up listening to stories on disc, and at
    that age, when you don’t ask questions about what’s coming next, I very much
    wanted to become a story teller, the person whom you don’t see but who guides
    you through the story. I still want to be a storyteller. And this is an
    important aspect for a director when making a film. As to the short film Equally
    Red and Blue     I could say that it is a story. It does contain clear clues
    that you are part of a story, and you can identify them from the very first
    scenes. I wanted to make a movie that could be associated with a story, the
    characters in my story are facing off and some of them could be labelled as
    negative. But towards the end of the film things change, the end is actually
    open. I believe that good triumphs over evil, and this positive ending also
    happens thanks to the audience’s contribution.




    Equally Red and Blue is the story of Ana, who is celebrating a year
    since she has been in a relationship with Stefan. It is a different kind of
    relationship, another kind of anniversary, and another kind of present. Ana agrees
    to be a surrogate mother for the baby that Stefan’s wife cannot carry. Much too
    late, Stefan realises that he in fact wants something else. It is a story
    inspired from reality, which Georgiana wanted to put on film:




    I will tell in short a moment I lived
    alongside a friend, a friend who tried for years to have a child, but nothing
    worked. And so together I lived this amazing moment which for me got even more
    intense as time went by. My friend had to get to the hospital that prepared her
    for her in vitro fertilisation. It was late at night, the streets were mostly
    clear, and we stopped for a few seconds in an intersection, seconds that seemed
    like hours. We were close to the hospital, and even though my friend had been
    there many times, she could not find her way there. I don’t recall her saying
    much back then, but I caught with the corner of my eye a look on her face that
    I hadn’t until then. It was a look that gathered within itself everything that
    she felt. That is because it was time to have the procedure, and we just kept
    lingering in the intersection, because we didn’t know the way.




    Georgiana was completely taken by surprise by
    the selection at Cannes:




    I didn’t expect that, and I was very happy, a
    selection at the Cannes festival makes you very happy. But a director does not
    make a movie thinking of awards. It is less selfish than that, you think mostly
    of the story you’re trying to tell, not live your days thinking of festivals.
    What you want most is for your story to be the closest to what you wanted to
    convey to the viewer.




    The short film Equally Red and Blue
    features actors Miruna Blidariu, Bogdan Albulescu, Florentina Tilea and Mihaela
    Popa, and is produced by Alexandra Morariu Buzoianu and Adrian Bulgariu.

  • Shakespeare Planet in Craiova and Bucharest

    Shakespeare Planet in Craiova and Bucharest

    Considered to be one of the most important theme festivals in Europe and one of the most important Shakespeare festivals in the world, the Shakespeare International Festival, this year in its 9th edition, took place between 23 April – 6 May. Shakespeare Planet was proposed as the them by the organizers, the Marin Sorescu Theater of Craiova and the Shakespeare Foundation. The festival came to Bucharest too this spring, as in previous years, but this time it came to Nottara Theater, as a section of the ‘Fest(in) pe Bulevard’ International Theater Festival.



    Shakespeare Planet staged plays from countries on six continents, with various approaches, some quite original and surprising. The opening show was ‘Shakespeare’s African Tales’, produced by the New Theater of Warsaw, Poland, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, one of the most highly appreciated European directors, who got that same day the International Shakespeare Award, this year in its 6th edition. Well known for his modern take on classical texts, Warlikowski created an original script by adapting King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello, to which he added Summertime by J. M. Coetzee. The silent characters in Shakespeare’s plays speak in the African Tales due to dedicated monologues written by Lebanese-Canadian writer Wajdi Mouawad. Lear, Shylock and Othello are played in this show by the same actor, Adam Ferency. In fact, he plays the role of a man enduring the suffering and humiliations of an old man, a Jewish man, and a dark skinned man. We asked Adam Ferency what the director meant to convey:



    Adam Ferency: “Hard to say, because it is a conversation about the senses, or half-tones, or very subtle things. I worked at the show for a very long time. I didn’t know anything at first. We started talking. I knew that it involved three Shakespeare plays, with fragments from Coetzee, and also monologues by Mouawas, which I didn’t know about at first. What I did know from the first was, of course, that it had to do with an old man who is not accepted by the majority and is shunned. That was the starting point. But the most important thing was when I had the revelation, when I understood that I was supposed to play a single character, not three. For instance, when I play Othello, who is black… I realized that it doesn’t matter if I am black or some other character, because it is a bit about me, the actor, who is growing old, with narrowing perspectives, so it is a bit about me.



    Another original proposal was brought to Craiova and Bucharest by the Q Brothers Company and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater of the US. It is Othello- The Remix, with Shakespeare’s text re-written on original music. The Q Brothers Company was set up 20 years ago by the Qaiyum brothers, who wanted from the start to combine theater and rap. All the members of the troupe are actors, but also have musical training. Gregory Qaiyum, aka GQ, the middle brother, writes the scripts and co-directs, and plays Iago in Othello- The Remix.



    Gregory Qaiyum: “What we try to do is tell the story the same way that Shakespeare did. The reason why Shakespeares stories are classic are because he took the stories from the Greeks before him, and who knows where they took the stories from, so he is just retelling stories, the Greek classics, through his lens of what was modern poetry in his time, and we are taking his work and we are telling it through the lens of what is modern poetry in this time, which is hip-hop and rap. At least for us, this is what we were born into, this is what we grew up with, thats how we see the world. So were just telling the same story through our own eyes, and we stay true to the elements of the story and the plot, but we have our own versions of every character and every instance, and its a way of paying homage to the original, but its also a way of staying true to the popular culture of the day.




    The Shakespeare International Festival of Craiova ended with a special show presented by the Ex Machina Company of Quebec, Canada, a production of Needles and Opium directed by Robert Lepage. Legendary director Peter Brook said about the director that he was a genius of contemporary directing. The show is extremely original, built on new technologies. Here is actor Olivier Normand, an actor in the show:




    Olivier Normand: “All the technology that he uses in this show is always in order to tell the story in another language. The set is like a cube thats revolving, so at first its like a hotel room, and a good part of the story is about a guy who goes through heartbreak, hes really lost, so at one point Im in my hotel room, and it starts to pivot as Im lost, I lost all my reference points. So the technology of the set helps me get into that mood, an I participate in telling the story. Its not about showing off the possibilities of the technology, its always in relation to what were trying to talk about in the story.



    Needles and Opium explores ways to overcome pain, says Olivier Norman:



    Olivier Norman: “Its about heartbreak, and its also about this coincidence that the room in which the character is is room number 9, in Hotel La Louisiane, which was the room where Miles Davis stayed when he came to Paris in 1949, and at the same time Jean Cocteau, a French poet, went for the first time to New York City. So its like all these three stories intertwine, and my character… How can you explain to yourself or explain with you, sometimes you have to relate to other peoples stories, and you have to be prepared to see how they coped with it, how I can cope with it. And the question he asks is, Im not a genius like Miles Davis or Jean Cocteau, so what do I do with my pain, I cannot turn it into some sublime art, like the music from Miles Davis or the poems of Jean Cocteau, I dont know what to do. Its more of a question that he asks, but sometimes looking at someone elses story helps you to deal with your own grief.


    (translated by: Calin Cotoiu)

  • The LIKE CNDB Festival – “You are the context”

    The LIKE CNDB Festival – “You are the context”

    Staged by the Bucharest-based National Dance Centre, the present edition of this festival has a special programme and structure. In spite of being the most compressed edition so far, it has an international section. Here is with more the CNDB manager, choreographer Vava Stefanescu.




    Vava Stefanescu: “The first edition lasted for a month. We started from a very poor state, but I remember the people who came to the Centre after an absence of several years from Bucharest’s cultural landscape. We used to have a round of talks shortly after the show and I would hear the people who left saying, ‘what a lovely night. I haven’t seen anything like that for a long time!’ We have grown ever since. We acquired a new hall. This is a winter festival and has been designed as a local event. It is a dance festival of Bucharest, spanning over a month or a month and a half. This year’s circumstances forced us to compress the event quite a lot. So, we had to capitalise on the partnership we have with Aerowaves, a very big network, a platform aimed at presenting and promoting young choreographers. Being part of this network enabled us to schedule three foreign shows: we opened the festival with Ohne Nix of Austria/Britain. Homo Furens is a French show and on April 21st we staged a Danish performance called Dans, for Satan.”




    “Ohne Nix” created and performed by artists Luke Baio and Dominik Grunbuhel, is using digital elements as well as body projection, shape tricks and humour. In a different direction, Homo Furens, by French choreographer Filipe Lourenco, employs only the bodies of the five dancers to look at how we define movement.


    But LIKE CNDB festival remains focused on Romanian dance. Here is Vava Stefanescu again at the microphone.




    Vava Stefanescu: ”The Romanian section spans three days in the Focus LIKE CNDB 2018. It is a showcase section, with up to 3 performances a day. With the upcoming Romanian-French cultural season, we’ll have guests such as festival directors, directors of contemporary dance theatres who will come to see the best Romanian productions. These are the most relevant shows. The shows that make up the context, that talk about context, that generate ideas you would not normally think about. Ideas that it approaches from a perspective that opens up the mind to thinking, ideas well-structured within the composition of the show. It is not just the idea that matters, but how they are placed within this mechanism.




    One of the shows considered relevant is 37 Minutes of Make Believe, created and performed by Andreea Novac.




    Andrea Novac: “I started off from a thing that has been a concern to me in all my shows — the meeting between me and the audience. Except that this time I decided for this meeting to take place at the level of the imagination. Therefore the show 37 minutes… works with my imagination and that of the spectator, and with what happens when the two meet. It has a lot of humour and is a way of showing the audience the ways in which what I do on stage can meet what they imagine me doing on stage, and this becomes an exchange. I work with three simple things. One of them is the word, which opens up or closes up possibilities. I also work with the idea that a movement can be exactly what I want it to be, or the opposite, a movement may have all the meanings in the world. And finally, because imagination works with things that we know, but are re-organised, repositioned so that new things emerge, there is a moment when I do this directly with the audience.”




    The 5th edition of the LIKE CNDB Festival — “You Are the Context” takes place in the context of preparations for an important moment: the relocation of the Centre to a new space, Omnia Hall, associated with a new stage in its activity. The hall will be inaugurated in 2020. This is why the Centre invites local artists, the team, the audience and the authorities to try to give performance answers to the question: “What will CNDB look like in 2020?” And 3 of the Festival days will be devoted to the series “Performance Answers”. Here is Vava Stefanescu again:




    Vava Stefanescu: “There will be several performances every evening. For instance, Dan Perjovschi will be live from Omnia Hall with a performance. We may also have there Ada Solomon, Alexandru Solomon… people who had a connection with the Centre, benefited from the Centre, or simply members of the public. I believe it is very important to have this exercise in imagination and projection, because in times of change you have to own your space and your property. Contemporary dance and all it means — the convergence with other art domains, with other cultural domains, not necessarily artistic — has always been a feature of CNDB. At that point it would be under a new status. I believe this exercise is good for the public, the artists, and those who work.”


  • Anthology of Romanian Fiction gets published in Germany

    Anthology of Romanian Fiction gets published in Germany

    The launch of an
    anthology of Romanian contemporary fiction titled Das Leben wie ein
    Tortenboden. Neue Rumanische Prosa (Life as a Cake Batter), recently
    released by Transit Publishers in Berlin, was one of the highlights of the
    International Book Fair in Leipzig, held over March 15-18, where Romania was
    guest of honour. The anthology comprises Romanian contemporary texts published
    between 2002 and 2014 by writers such as Gabriela Adameşteanu, Bogdan Costin,
    Petru Cimpoesu, Adela Greceanu, Nora Iuga, Dan Lungu, Marin Mălaicu-Hondrari,
    Ovidiu Nimigean, Ioana Pârvulescu, Marta Petreu, Răzvan Rădulescu, Adina
    Rosetti and Lucian Dan Teodorovici. After the launch at the fair, the anthology
    was also presented at the Romanian Cultural Institute headquarters in Berlin.




    The texts were
    translated as part of workshops hosted by the Romanian Cultural Institute in
    cooperation with the Romanian Department of the University of Humboldt. The
    workshops, which began in 2015 and were coordinated by translator Anke Pfeifer,
    are aimed at shaping a new generation of professional translators of Romanian
    and German. Another goal is to facilitate contact between Romanian writers,
    translators and publishers in the German-speaking space, with a view to
    promoting Romanian writers on the German book market.




    Anke Pfeifer,
    one of the editors of the volume, has a close connection with Romanian
    literature. Her PhD thesis is titled Elements of the Picaresque in Romanian
    Literature. She has given Romanian literature lectures at prestigious
    universities and has written articles on Romanian literature, as well as
    reviews of books translated into German. Anke Pfeifer believes the recently
    released anthology of Romanian prose will provide German readers with an
    overview of Romanian contemporary fiction. In an interview to RRI, Anke Pfeifer
    explained how this anthology was born as a result of the workshops held by the
    Romanian Cultural Institute in Berlin:




    The Romanian
    language workshops that I give are open to everybody. The participants are
    usually Romanian language students, former students or native Romanian
    speakers. But they are not designed as permanent courses. Two years ago there
    was a translation workshop coordinated by translator Ewa Wemme, but the
    participants only translated poetry. Then the Romanian Cultural Institute in
    Berlin organised a new project, focusing on prose translations, with a view to
    publishing an anthology. There were some texts by contemporary Romanian authors
    already translated at the Humboldt University, but these were only 6 texts, not
    enough for a volume. This is why myself and the other editors, and I would like
    to mention Daniela Duca and Valeriu Stancu especially, chose a few other texts
    as well. And the workshop participants, some of them students, translated the
    respective works. Obviously, during our classes we discussed the translations
    and decided on the final version. I can certainly say that it was a pleasure
    and a challenge alike for us to translate these works. And of course, the fact
    that they were supposed to be published in a volume was a great incentive for
    translators.




    Anke Pfeifer
    also tells us that there were several stages in the compilation and editing the
    contemporary Romanian prose anthology published by Transit Publishers:




    Eight years
    ago, professor Valeriu Stancu from the Romanian Language Chair of the Alexander
    von Humboldt University in Berlin chose some Romanian texts that had just been
    published. But it was actually the students who worked on the translation
    proper that had the last say in the selection of the texts. They chose both
    short prose pieces and excerpts from novels, by authors like Dan Lungu, Lucian
    Dan Teodorovici, Bogdan Costin and Razvan Radulescu. We noticed that only male
    writers had been chosen, and because contemporary Romanian literature also has
    some very good women writers, in the second stage of the selection process we
    picked texts written by women. Some of them are writers that are already known
    in Germany, like Nora Iuga and Gabriela Adamesteanu, others are less frequently
    translated into German, such as Ioana Parvulescu, Adela Greceanu and Adina
    Rosetti. Our anthology was talked about in the media, for instance in the
    publication Neue Zürcher Zeitung,
    or in special shows devoted to the Leipzig Book Fair. Two weeks ago, at the
    Romanian Cultural Institute in Berlin, we presented it to quite a large
    audience. We are planning further presentations, in various cities in Germany,
    Austria and Switzerland. And we hope many readers will show up in those cities
    as well.




    At the Leipzig
    Book Fair, Romania was the guest of honour, and so were the Romanian literature
    projects organised by our guest today, Anke Pfeifer:




    At the Leipzig
    Book Fair, readers were quite interested in Romanian literature. Romania
    presented more than 40 translations, and the Romanian stand was constantly
    swarming with people leafing through the books. People attended the presentations
    given by the guest authors, as well as the debates concerning the Romanian
    culture and literature. I believe this year’s fair and the newly released books
    will be a good starting point for those who want to know more about the
    Romanian literature. As far as I’m concerned, I’m planning a number of reviews,
    one on a novel by Stefan Agopian that has just been translated into German, and
    another one on a new book of poems by Ana Blandiana.

  • The One World International Documentary and Human Rights Film Festival

    The One World International Documentary and Human Rights Film Festival


    This year, One World Romania visits highly debated topics. The state of justice, modernizing education, and reconsidering the family in modern terms are subjects that are intensely covered in the media, generating heated debates in Romania and abroad. For this reason, the 11th edition of the One World Romania festival will pay particular attention to them, dedicating them special sections. Here is Alexandru Solomon, director of the festival.




    Alexandru Solomon: “These topics are currently of interest both in Romania and abroad. The topic of justice, though we may have grown tired of it, seems to be of even more acute interest. We thought that things had settled, but it seems that the idea of rule of law is still an open sore in Romania. The rights of the LGBTQ community is of more and more interest in society, especially following a number of ugly incidents in the last few months, when fundamentalist groups have tried to stop the screening of movies with such topics. As for education and its importance in Romanian society, there is much to say. It is clear that if we dont pay closer attention to education, we will be going nowhere.”





    The 11th edition of the One World festival includes a section called Film Archive Memory, in order to help bring to light historical events, in order to shed a better light on the present. In fact, one of the constant concerns of the One World Romania Association was to recover the documentaries in the collection of the former Alexandru Sahia film studios. Here is festival co-director Andrei Rus.





    Andrei Rus: “This is a wider concept. This section, Archive Memory, has several points of connection with this edition of the One World Romania, because we have paid closer attention to the ways in which the past influences the present, and implicitly the future. When we put together this section, we started off from the idea of the Centennial, but we tried to go about it avoiding sensationalism and trying to engage the public in a return to reality. Which is why the slogan of this edition is Get Real!, getting back to reality. There are several sections in which movies question various aspects of the past, and the way they influence the present. One of the biggest sections is FUTURE PAST, with 10 movies from all over the world treating various topics, starting with the influence that communism and fascism had on societies.”





    The Culture of Protest, another section of this edition of the One World Romania festival, includes 5 documentaries presenting various forms of protest through stories from all over the world: Cambodia (A Cambodian Spring), Israel (Before My Feet Touch the Ground), France (The Gathering), the US (Whose Streets?), and Romania (Megaphone). Here is festival director Alexandru Solomon once again.





    Alexandru Solomon: “Even though they have been going strong in the last two years, I believe that street protests in Romania are in an impasse, seeking a direction, a leader. I thought it would be interesting to debate this culture of protest around the world, through films, from Cambodia to this part of the world. In this edition of One World we have a Romanian movie on this topic, Megaphone. It seems important to me to look at other places too, to see where these protests led, if they managed to change the politics, or bring about another kind of discourse. To this end, we will be screening a movie from Hong Kong which talks about a street protest movement which subsequently turned into an organized political movement. In addition, we wanted to put things in historical perspective, a perspective on recent history, focusing on the year 1968, with movies about the protests of the 1960s and 70s in France, Czechoslovakia and Italy.”





    In fact, one of the sections of the festival is 1968: 50 YEARS AFTER, reminding us that we celebrate half a century since the year 1968, which saw major protests in both the East and the West, protests that led to sweeping changes in society and collective consciousness across the world. Here is Andrei Rus, co-director.





    Andrei Rus: “We will have several connected events that I care about very much. One of these is dedicated to student movements across the world 50 years ago, which were meant to change the world. With these events, we wanted to analyze the way in which these revolts managed to change society. We will be debating this topic in two discussions. One of the debates is on Saturday, at ARCUB, and the guests will be historian Lavinia Betea, Marius Deaconu, ANOSR president, and Karel Kovanda, Monika MacDonagh-Pajerova, the protagonists of the movie The Czech Student Revolt.”




    The second event, 1968. Between East and West, will take place on March 25, starting at noon at the French Institute, where the audience will be able to meet famous French journalist Bernard Guetta, who will recount his own experience of Paris in 1968, and how these events influenced the world in which we live. The 11th edition of the One World International Documentary and Human Rights Film Festival will feature 12 documentary films, produced or co-produced in Romania.


  • Micro-history. True stories, told live

    Micro-history. True stories, told live

    Who are we today, 100 years on? Who are
    Romania’s citizens, what problems are they facing after their country
    experienced two world wars, over 40 years of communism and some 30 years of
    transition to capitalism? What impact have these events had on people from
    various generations and belonging to various ethnic minorities? And no less
    important, what is the future they dream of? These are some of the questions to
    be answered by the project titled Micro-history. True stories, told live,
    produced by the Romanian Association for the Promotion of Performing Arts,
    jointly with the National Radio Drama Department. Launched in October 2017,
    under the title Romania 100. True stories told live, the project reached its
    second edition in early March. Micro-history has the ambitious goal of
    compiling a special archive, made up of stories told by common people. In more
    concrete terms, a casting is being organised, of people who have accepted the
    invitation to tell a personal story on stage, before 100 unknown people. 13
    stories have been selected at each edition, told to the public and then
    archived on the website www.microistoria.ro
    .

    The person in charge of the casting was
    Florentina Bratfanof, who told us about
    how the finalists were selected:


    It was a matter of organic choice, so to
    speak, at the recommendation of people around me and people who knew the
    project team. On January 15, I started making those invitations and talking to
    various people. I didn’t know most of them. We had some very interesting
    meetings and we kept telling stories for three-four hours in a row. The type of
    communication was just like an embrace, because they told me their stories and
    I told them mine, out of the wish to get to know as much as possible about a
    person who is practically a perfect stranger. Basically, the criteria we used
    were gender and age. But there are stories that are more telling and relevant
    than others. For instance, it was the story of an 18-year-old teenage girl,
    which seemed extremely relevant to me, although I’m twice her age. So what
    mattered in particular was the story, stage charisma and the way in which
    people narrated their stories.


    Director Peter Kerek was the one who prepared
    the finalists for the stage, for the encounter with the public.


    We offered them the chance to stand before the
    public – in this case, they were the other group – and do nothing, say nothing,
    just think about whatever they wanted. There were five-minute moments of
    silence, and then we started to combine them with music. There were group and
    individual moments of silence, so we practically closed the speaking door to
    only reopen it before the public. First and foremost we wanted them to hear
    their own story, to understand what they were really interested in, what
    touched or moved them in their story and then to process it and to become
    listeners to their own story.


    At the second edition of Micro-history, the
    participants had to tell how they survived the transition from communism to
    capitalism. One of those who took part in the casting was Dana Vlăsceanu. Aged
    36, an ethnic Rroma and a former drug addict, Dana Vlăsceanu told us how she
    ended up running a community centre and helping the inhabitants of the
    Ferentari district in Bucharest.


    Dana Vlasceanu wanted to take part in the
    project because she believed it was very important to set examples and that her
    story could motivate and guide people:


    I’ve changed a lot. People who’ve known me for
    eight years know that. I am the same person, but I have evolved. I wanted to
    learn more and I did it and I am still learning. I went back to school, because
    I had only graduated from the 7th grade. I wanted to be an example
    for my children. My close friends are happy for me and my achievements. At the
    centre, we’ve started to work with the children living in the community. We
    have organised all sorts of workshops, activities, Christmas parties. We have
    really got involved in the community. People who need something in particular
    and do not know what to do, usually come to us. They know I can guide them.


    Thomas Mendel, aged 39, is a dentist. In 1988 he
    and his family left Romania and settled in Israel. He came back to the country
    in 2003. Thomas believes that stories can inspire us. Of the many stories that
    had changed his life, he chose to tell a story from his childhood:


    In 1989, my
    grandma came on a visit to Israel. In the morning, I took her to the grocery
    shop, to buy something for breakfast. She was in her 50s back then and she
    burst into tears. As I was a child, it was really disturbing to see a strong
    woman, who had coped with everything back in Romania, crying like that. It was
    probably the first time I realized how difficult it had been back in Romania
    and how tormented those people were. I think the contrast between the two
    worlds is very important. We have to be able to understand where we are and
    where we could be. Truth and justice have a high price sometimes, just like
    freedom, but they are worth fighting for. And, if you get involved in
    something, and make sacrifices and take courageous decisions, then you stand
    the chance of getting into a better world.


    The initiator of the Micro-history project and
    its curator is theatre critic Cristina Modreanu, who underlined, at the end of
    the second edition, that a very interesting and diverse fresco of very personal
    stories was taking shape, coming from various regions of the country, narrated
    by people from various walks of life, different backgrounds and age brackets.
    What does contemporary Romania look like, after listening to the stories told
    by common people who live here?

    Cristina Modreanu attempted an answer:


    You get the image of a country rather traumatised by this transition
    period, spanning approximately 30 years, since the Romanian Revolution to the
    present day. I say this because the featured theme this year was ‘survival in
    transition’. However, the stories told during the first edition can also be
    included in this category, too. So, you see a country troubled by historical
    events, whose people have tried to find their way through, or by growing up,
    have tried to find models and landmarks; a country like a building site, I
    could say, but at the same time, full of hope, optimism and the power to renew
    itself, irrespective of the tragedies it has been experiencing.



  • Ada Solomon, the New EWA President

    Ada Solomon, the New EWA President

    Some of EWAs other objectives are creating a strong community of professional women to share experiences and support each other, as well as promoting audiovisual content created by women. The EWA Network grants awards annually at the DOK Leipzig, WEMW-Trieste, and La Coruna festivals. Here is Ada Solomon:



    “It is an organization that has grown beautifully over the last few years, and which speaks less and does more, an attitude that suits me. The organization was created a few years ago, it is not a recent reaction meant to protect women in the audiovisual industry. It is an organization based more on shared positive experiences, a construction in which the more experienced try to share with younger colleagues, to be role models in success. I believe that there are many positive examples of a good integration of women in this industry, and in my opinion we have to use them, and build on them. This is my opinion, because I generally look on the positive side of things in life.”



    Some of the activities Ada Solomon carried out as part of the organization were moderating the debate Gender Representation in European films in Berlin in 2014, teaching a master- class at the annual conference of EWA members in 2017, and this year in Trieste attending the mentorship program for beginner film producers.



    “I think it is important to discuss this, because womens presence, both in terms of authorship and in terms of film content has been on the rise lately, but it was almost invisible many years before that. It is very interesting to see that in the last few years, looking on projects by younger or more experienced filmmakers, there is an almost obsessive return to the family, to the small community; also, the maternal figure is being re-evaluated in film. At the same time, we noticed that the presence of a woman — since filmmaking is a team undertaking — is very important. Because a woman can be very dedicated, be a good mediator, and can dedicate to a project with delicacy, diplomacy, and with less ego than a man. These are qualities to be used.”



    Ada Solomon has produced and co-produced over 50 movies, which won over 180 awards at film festivals all over the world. She is the producer of the feature film Out of love, with the Best Intentions, by Adrian Sitaru, which won two awards in 2011 in Locarno, as well as the movies by Radu Jude Everyone in Our Family, which got the Heart of Sarajevo awards in 2012, the Bayard dOr Grand Prize and the Best Leading Actor award at the Namur IFF, Aferim!’, which was nominated in over 30 festivals and got the Silver Bear in 2015 in Berlin for best director, the Grand Trophy at the Indie Lisboa, the FIPRESCI award at the Miskolc Jameson Film Festival, the audience award at the Lets CEE Film Festival, and the Bayard dOr at the Francophone Film Festival in Namur, and Scarred Hearts, which, among others, got the Special Jury Award in Locarno, and the Silver Astor for best director at the Mar del Plata Film Festival. She was also the producer for the 2013 Childs Pose, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, the first Romanian feature length movie that won the Silver Bear in Berlin.



    In 2017 alone, Ada Solomon produced five films — three fiction and two documentary — considered the most important Romanian films of the year: One Step Behind the Seraphims, written and directed by Daniel Sandu, Maritza, by Cristian Iftime, Dead Country by Radu Jude, Tarzans Eggs, by Alexandru Solomon, and Soldiers. A Ferentari Story, the feature length debut by Ivana Mladenovici.



    “I pick the movies based on who makes them. The way in which I pick the people is related to the way in which I see the world, to common values I have with them. I could not work with someone I dont share a value system with. If I look at the movies made last year, I could say that I have much in common with their makers. First of all, there is the way in which we see the world and the way in which we want to reveal it, to show it to the audience. Of course I chose these movies carefully, theres a lot of money going into making a movie, and for me making a movie just to offer half an hour of entertainment is not enough. I believe it is my duty to offer the audience more, to give them something to debate, to question their own vision of the world, and their attitudes. If I manage that or not, that remains to be seen. But I do what I can to stir things up.”



    In 2013, Ada Solomon won the Eurimages Award for co-production, a distinction granted by the European Film Academy, in recognition of the decisive role of co-productions in the European film industry. One year later, she worked on the co-production Toni Erdmann, directed by Maren Ade, shot in Romania and nominated for the Best Foreign Film in a Language Other than English at the 2017 Academy Awards. In January 2018, she got an award from the Central European Initiative for contributions to intercultural dialog at the Alpe Adria Trieste Festival. Ada Solomon is director in charge of distribution at microFILM, and the initiator of the Film NexT International Festival. She is a member of the European Film Academy board, and coordinator for Romania at the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs. (Translated by C. Cotoiu)

  • Cristian Sofron, the new manager of the Odeon Theater in Bucharest

    Cristian Sofron, the new manager of the Odeon Theater in Bucharest

    The very popular Romanian actress Dorina Lazar was the top-level manager of the Odeon Theater in Bucharest for more than a decade. A substantial change has occurred at this level, since the beginning of 2018 saw actor Cristian Sofron taking up the top managerial position of the aforementioned theater. Cristian Sofron is a well-known actor himself, having shot to fame when he featured in the TV Series At Full Sail, as sailor Mihu. For five years, Cristian Sofron was the Manager of the Nicolae Balcescu UNESCO Cultural center. Early into his term in office manager Cristian Sofron’s main concern is to secure a better promotion of the Odeon Theater outside the country, since the institution he runs has for long been one of Romania’s oldest and most important stages.



    With details on that, here is Cristian Sofron himself : “What I want for the Odeon Theater is that everything happening there, stage performances, related events, all sorts of other events, should fall under the slogan ‘Everything at the level of excellence.’ The Odeon Theater is one of Romania’s most important theaters, what I want is that it should become one of Europe’ best theaters and why not, one of the best theaters in the world. The Odeon Theater has traveled widely, it goes places on a considerable number of occasions, but maybe we should steer our energies towards taking part in the really important festivals across the country as well as abroad, we should try to bring over specialists, so that they may see our work, so that they may appreciate our stage performances…That cannot be achieved in a couple of months, that’s for sure, but I am dead positive that, slowly but surely, the Odeon Theater will become more and more known abroad”.



    The new manager of the Odeon Theatre shares the belief that excellency can also be achieved by inviting important stage directors. So, in the upcoming period, one of the most popular and highly-acclaimed Romanian stage artists, Alexandru Dabija, will work with the Odeon Theater, stage-directing a show titled The Tales of an unknown man, after Tchekhov’s Stories. The name of Alexandru Dabija is closely linked to the history of the Odeon Theater, where he staged a number of shows. We recall Alexandru Dabija was also the manager of Odeon Theater between 1991 and 1994 and 1996 and 2002, respectively. Another stage director, currently employed by the Odeon Theater, Dragos Galgotiu, will be starting rehearsals for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Dragos Galgotiu’s stage version of the play seeks to be an event in its own right. Younger stage directors Andrei and Andreea Grosu, the founders of the Unteatru independent theater, return to Odeon to stage Mihail Sebastian’s Playing Holiday. By the end of the season, director Zoltan Balazs, manager of the Maladype Theater in Budapest, is guest artist as part of the European project titled “Fabulamundi. Playwriting Europe”. Balasz will be staging the young Polish playwright Elżbieta Chowaniec’s Gardenia. Besides the directors invited, manager Cristian Sofron also has other plans for the Odeon Theatre, beginning with the Odeon Gallery.



    Cristian Sofron: “There is a section destined for exhibitions in the Odeon Theatre. I wanted this section to be open to visitors all throughout the day. It doesn’t seem fair that the wonderful works on display there to be seen only by the spectators who come for the shows at the studio hall and who are no more than 100-120 people. We have lots of projects targeting young theatre buffs who can visit our theatre when the stage is being mounted if they want to see how shows are prepared and all. We are running such a project through the Alternate Schooling programme in the following period. So young people and children alike are allowed to come and see for themselves how we mount the set and get the stage ready for every show. We have recently initiated a project, which we called ‘The Night of the Young Director”, during which the National University of Theatre and Cinema can present its most valuable shows on the stage of the Odeon Theatre. I think we should think of the young generations as well.”



    Currently working for the Odeon Theatre, choreographer and director Razvan Mazilu, an artist famous for his contribution to the improvement of Romania’s dance and musical theatre section and for the support he grants to young choreographers, is to stage, as every year, a dance gala, on April 29th, the International Dance Day. Discussions are underway about staging a show on the life of actress Judy Garland.



    The building housing the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest is an architectural gem dating back to 1911. The building has had several incarnations, at present being the only theatre with an Italian stage and a gliding ceiling. Located on the Victory Road, close to the University, the building is one of Bucharest’s major tourist attractions. With completely refurbished premises, reinforced and re-adorned after the initial projects of 1911, the Odeon Theatre can address even foreign tourists, provided the shows are translated. Here is again manager Cristian Sofron.



    Cristian Sofron: “The Odeon Theatre has the proper installation and most of the shows here have been translated into English. We have the right personnel trained for this job, so we are waiting for foreign tourists as well. We are very committed to this aspect and we have some challenges for the travel agencies. It’s for the first time I make this statement: in my opinion a complete travel package should also include a cultural event, a theatre performance…and I am convinced that when I can present travel agencies with this proposal, the answer will be a positive one.”



    A first initiative of the new Odeon director has been to enlarge the theatre’s acting crew by hiring several young and also some famous actors such as Adrian Titieni and Andi Vasluianu, two actors who have attained international recognition thanks to the roles they played in films.



  • Film director Alina Pintilie

    Film director Alina Pintilie

    Adina Pintilies feature film “Touch Me Not wins the Golden Bear, at the Berlin Film Festival.Shot between 2015 and 2017, “Touch Me Not has a mixed cast of professional and non-professional actors from all over Europe, from Romania to Iceland, Germany, Bulgaria, France and the UK. The director of the Berlin Festival, Dieter Kosslick, received the film with enthusiasm and said he was impressed with it.



    Adina Pintilie: “It was an act of trust from the organisers, but Im not sure our film is an exception. In any case, we were greeted with open arms and we are grateful for this. We worked a lot on this film, it took us about seven years to make. We began in 2011 and everything went well abroad in terms of funding, but then we couldnt get any funding in Romania, at least not until our international success became known. So it was a beautiful project, but difficult from many points of view.



    A combination of fiction, documentary and visual art and a daring experiment in terms of content and cinematographic language, “Touch Me Not is a personal exploration of the idea of intimacy and of the human need for authentic contact. “The film is an attempt to discover the different layers of intimacy. Intimacy is full of dangers. The obverse of love can be hate, aggression, and intolerance. These are all sides of the same complex reality, says Adina Pintilie:



    Adina Pintilie: “I believe the way in which we experience intimacy is influenced by many different factors, such as education, the culture we live in, our background. However, the practical reality of the interaction with others is much more complex. So this is how my film was born, out of curiosity. I realised I didnt know much about intimacy and human nature, and I began to rediscover some of the sometimes surprising ways of experiencing intimacy. I worked both with professional actors and with non-professionals, people who had never worked in cinema before but who were interested in this area of research. The result is a combination between their personal stories and fictional elements. We experimented with pschycodrama and tried out many things that highlighted precisely the mechanisms we often use in our interaction with the others without realising it. In fact, all characters are faced with this conflict between the need for intimacy and the fear of entering a relationship of interdependence, afraid that they may become too vulnerable.



    Touch Me Not is not Adina Pintilies first film on the border between fiction, documentary and the visual arts. Her previous productions are viewed by critics as a unique phenomenon on the local cinematographic landscape, standing out for their profoundly personal visual style, bold experimentation with the cinematographic language and an uncompromising exploration of human psychology. We asked Adina Pintilie what is the most important thing for her when she creates a story:



    Adina Pintilie: “Im always very open-minded when I begin a new project and the form it takes is often the result of its content. In this case I began with a script that was more of a general sketch for my research. There was an initial story and I chose my cast based on it, but the cast I ended up with was more suitable to a documentary film than a feature film. We tried to get to know the person in front of us, we worked with music that means a lot to these people and we worked with memories and with dreams. Having found the right people, I then began this experimentation in intimacy, using fiction as a structure that allowed us to work with elements from reality. Given that intimacy is a difficult area for many of us, including the participants in the project, the fact that I used a fictional structure created a safe zone around the project. This means that no one in my crew knew what is personal and what is fictional in the material we used in our work with the actors.



    “Touch Me Not is the first part of a future multi-platform project supported, among others, by the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Spinnerei Art Centre in Leipzig. “Exploring, beyond taboos, the essential role that intimacy plays in human development, Touch Me Not aims to open new paths, to educate, to promote tolerance and freedom of expression, to create a space for (self)reflection, making viewers to reassess their own ideas about intimacy, Adina Pintilie also said.



    Her most recent medium-length film called “Oxygen was part of the official selection of the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2010 and was nominated for the best short-film award and best young talent award of the Romanian film awards in 2011. “Journal #2, a Dutch-Romanian coproduction, Adina Pintilies latest short-film, won the ZONTA best film award by a female director at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhauseun in 2013, while her previous short film, “Balastiera #186, was selected in the auteur short film category at the Locarno Film Festival in 2008.


    (translated by: Cristina Mateescu)

  • Bucharest’s Museum of Contemporary Art runs performing arts programme

    Bucharest’s Museum of Contemporary Art runs performing arts programme

    In May last year the National Museum of
    Contemporary Art in Bucharest launched a performing arts programme coordinated
    by director Ioana Paun. To what extent was this undertaking necessary? Here is
    Ioana Paun herself with more details:




    There are many such initiatives in Bucharest
    and in many cases their organisers can’t find venues to stage them. They are
    hybrid projects, sometimes mixing political arts with lectures, other times
    movement or more intimate forms, such as ‘one-on-one’ performances. We needed a
    venue that should bring these initiatives together, everything that performance
    art means. The Contemporary Art Museum is a space of the new arts, contemporary
    art, sometimes the art of the future. So any emerging form of art, hybrid or
    experimental art, is most welcome in this museum, especially if the project is
    backed by artists and performers. Whereas the National Dance Centre often
    showcases performance projects, there are no other venues in Bucharest devoted
    to this type of art.




    Ioana Paun’s interest for performance art goes
    back to the years she took up special classes, working with various Romanian
    artists:




    For
    quite a long time I needed to support these kind of initiatives coming from the
    field of theatre, which nevertheless involve artists doing visual art. So I
    toyed with this type of art starting 2010, when I took an MA in performance art
    at the Goldsmiths Faculty in London. This provided me with a whole different
    perspective on the practice of performing arts. So I came to Bucharest and
    started organising performance workshops at the Academy of Theatrical Arts and
    Cinematography. Attending were students, but also people from outside the
    faculty, musicians, anthropologists, people who were eager to explore
    performance art. Performance art is still uncharted territory in Romania. Every
    year I’ve been trying to organise a new workshop, discover new artists, tell
    them everything I’ve learned… And since there are so few festivals devoted to
    performing arts, I often looked for a venue that should bring such efforts
    together. Because of these workshops I’ve surrounded myself with artists,
    who’ve become autonomous and who started working together. I was used to work
    with this kind of art, as it doesn’t have a story, as in theatre, or a text it
    is based on, as we’re used to seeing in most theatre plays, and is thus harder
    to receive by the audience.




    Through this project, Ioana Paun proposes a
    monthly programme at the National Museum of Contemporary Art:




    In principle, there are three events every
    month. Every big opening is marked with a performance unfolding throughout the
    whole evening. The schedule is available on the museum’s web page and Facebook
    page. We usually have performances that have already been created, but which
    are very delicate and fragile and which do not yet have a venue to be presented
    to the audience, so we invite them to the museum. Such an example is In
    Between Two Pills, Cinty Ionescu’s show on depression, which combines video
    art with live performance. Then, there is another event happening at the same
    time, which is more difficult to set up. It is entitled Nocturnal and it is
    at its third edition. It is a dedicated evening during which we listen to
    either digital or acoustic vanguard music. So far there have been two events
    that have enjoyed great success with music lovers, and the most recent one was
    broadcast live. Music events are held once every two months or every 45 days.
    Tickets are available online and at the Museum’s ticket office.




    This year, the
    National Museum of Contemporary Art will host the first performances included
    in the Free Territories programme, which inaugurates a new space of the museum
    dedicated especially to performances. Here is Ioana Păun with details:




    These performances
    will feature artists from Bucharest, from other cities of Romania and we also
    have two foreign groups. They will bring something new, because they were
    produced with much dedication to correspond to the artists’ expectations. We
    will make a public call in early February and artists will be able to sign up
    during the whole month of February. I’m trying to curate their ideas in line
    with what they want. That is why the performances will not be held in the new
    hall by all means. They can be held anywhere in Bucharest, in other spaces, in
    the public space or in other spaces of the museum, online or on the radio. This
    will happen during the entire year, I intend to have some 8 such projects
    produced.




    The first premiere
    of 2018 at the National Contemporary Art Museum will take place on February 8th.
    A free adaptation of the book The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion,
    the performance entitled NOK!NOK! was written and directed by actress Nicoleta
    Lefter and features actress Flavia Giurgiu. Ioana Păun is next at the
    microphone to talk about the performing arts programme of the month of
    February:




    In February we’ll
    have one of the nocturnes, and the premiere of the show NOK!NOK! by Nicoleta
    Lefter, which talks about the experience of finding out that someone has died,
    of how one comes to terms with and overcomes this. There will also be some
    performances for couples. Artist Ruxandra Hule has already made such performances.
    The show is called Us Against Us. It is a context, which the artist
    creates for couples, not necessarily life partners. The couples may consist of
    siblings, mothers and sons or daughters, or very close friends. For one hour,
    these couples will be working together with her by means of various artistic
    instruments in order to touch upon those sensitive aspects in their
    relationship that they never talk about. Many people have already been to this
    show, they have acquired all sorts of experiences, some more profound and
    others more amusing. The artist uses writing, pottery, and text messages to
    work with the couples; it is a very personal approach. We’ll also start
    performing the show entitled White Horse, which was also produced in the
    museum and which is about communist torturer Ioan Ficior. We intend to have a
    more humane approach, through art, of the economic, political and social issues
    which we are faced with every day.




    Less than one year
    since its launch, the performing arts programme of the National Contemporary
    Art Museum has attracted quite an audience. Ioana Păun says that there are very
    different people coming to the show, who somehow expected that to happen.

  • Marita, a Remarkable Feature Length Debut

    Marita, a Remarkable Feature Length Debut

    One of the qualities that were appreciated by European critics was ‘the simplicity in directing this story focused on the everyday life of a family whose members, though separated by the divorce of the parents, enjoy spontaneously every meeting and enjoy the positive energy in their lives’. The story, says director Cristi Iftimie, started from an event that its been on his mind. Even thought they had separated a long time before, out of sheer habit, a woman and a man head towards the couple’s old car, a Dacia they had baptized Marita.



    One of the questions we asked Cristi Iftime was related to building a cinematic story starting from a gesture that may seem insignificant: “That gesture was very poignant to me, it has been with me ever since, and usually my movies start off from events like that, that stay with me. I didn’t even give a thought to the risk. It is true that the ‘kill your darlings’ rule – which states that you should give up on the elements that you hold most dear in a story – usually works, but I ignored that when making Marita. At some point I was afraid the movie would not live up to my expectations, but, without false modesty, it seems to have worked out just fine. We tried to condense as many things as possible in the movie, but trying to keep it loose and simple at the same time.



    One of the ideas of the movie, according to the director, is for Sandu, Marita’s owner and father to three children, passionate about stamp collecting, self-declared lover of life, eager to tell his story, to be understood by the viewers without passing judgment. The same goes for Costi, one of Sandu’s three sons, apparently the most exigent when it comes to his father’s excesses, as it also happens when the family gathers around the Christmas table.



    Cristi Iftimie: “I’ve always been interested in alienation, the fact that they meet there, even though they are not together in any real way. They meet and feel good for a few hours in a pleasant and friendly atmosphere. But then these ties unravel, it was only circumstance that had them look and behave like a family, though they are not one. If there had been tensions and fights among them, this beautiful part of the meeting would have been a failure, it would have been pointless.



    Marita is a road movie that tries to capture an important moment in the life of a young man, that of separating from his father. It is a road movie physically, but also on the inside of the character, and this complexity is what attracted actor Alexandru Potocean, one of the best actors of the new wave, with over 30 titles under his belt, in domestic and international movies, working with famous directors like Radu Muntean, Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, and Constantin Popescu.



    Alexandru Potocean: “At a certain point, all this fabric of relationships built around the father started to interest me very much. I found something very familiar in that. This is how I started grasping the character of Sandu, understanding how Costi relates to him. In rehearsals, I started with the idea of prosecuting Sandu, most of the time. However, in the end it’s not all about that. That happens too, but the idea is not to judge Sandu. It is rather an attempt to understand him and the way he relates to life. Even if we don’t like it.



    Adrian Titieni, who got the Silver Hugo Award at the Chicago Film Festival for his role in Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation, winner of five Gopo awards, three for best leading actor and two for best supporting actor, is considered the most prolific actor right now. In 2017 alone he acted in 12 feature length and short movies. This is not the first time he worked with Cristi Iftimie. He also acted in the short film July 15, which made it through selection at the Berlin Film Festival.



    Adrian Titieni: “Cristi is a director with a very interesting background. He has a degree in film, but also has another in philosophy, which provides him with a very different outlook on film directing. He has an extraordinary attention for detail. He has a vision and a way of thinking that I like very much. I love working with people who see beyond immediate reality. This approach is a challenge for me. I am glad he cast me in this role, which is super-challenging, and difficult at the same time. At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t know if I lived up to expectations.



    The movie’s script was written by Anca Buja and Cristi Iftimie, Luchian Ciobanu was cinematographer, with editing done by Dragos Apetri. Costumes were designed by Alexandra Alma Ungureanu, set design was done by Malina Ionescu, and the sound design was signed by Dan Stefan Rucareanu, Alexandru Dumitru and Florin Tabacaru. The producers were Ada Solomon and Radu Stancu, and the movie features in the main roles Alexandru Potocean, Adrian Titieni, Lucian Iftime, Victoria Cocias, Andrei Hutuleac, Bogdan Dumitrache and Ana Ciontea.