Radio România Internațional

Category: World of Culture

Bucharest in Literature. Six Possible Readings of the City

Andreea Rasuceanu’s new book, “Bucharest in Literature. Six Possible Readings of the City” is a sort of experiment on the many forms of relation between the city and its literary projection, between the perception of the author and that of the reader, between the various interior maps and the different ways of reading the urban landscape. According to writer and literary critic Cornel Ungureanu, “Andreea Rasuceanu offers an image of Bucharest that formed as a result of the reading of several novels written by authors that define the current Romanian type of writing.

The readings proposed by this book anticipate in fact a new research method, that of geocriticism”. Here is critic Andreea Rasuceanu herself: “What I focused on in my book was the idea of the city itself. The city as a construction, the city as a fascinating object, the city as our second body that cannot be ignored. This is what I started from, so the idea of literary geography captivated me from the very beginning. As I mentioned in the book’s foreword, I started off having two goals in mind. On the one hand, to make the readers who are passionate about contemporary literature, which I have been focusing on lately, to actually see the city and have a different perspective on it, filtered with the help of these texts. On the other hand, I wanted to familiarize the readers who are passionate only about the history of this city, with the writings of these contemporary writers. So this was my intention, to offer a 2-type reading of the city, one via literature and one that is in fact a journey through literature via these literary cities.”

“Bucharest in Literature. Six Possible Readings of the City” speaks about the image of the city as it appears in the works of 6 writers from different generations. In the books of Mircea Cărtărescu, Gabriela Adameşteanu, Stelian Tănase, Simona Sora, Filip Florian and Ioana Pârvulescu, Bucharest becomes a character. Each chapter includes an interview, which is uncontested evidence pointing to the similarities and differences between the critic’s outer perspective and the way in which the writer experiences his or her relation with the city.

Here is Andreea Răsuceanu at the microphone with more: “I also found this relation interesting, between writers and the space they describe. They describe the contemporary space, the space that they are living in, which they see and experience every day or the space of past ages. I noticed that Gabriela Adameşteanu makes very ample descriptions of Bucharest as it was before 1989, and her descriptions could be good study material for anthropologists, for those who want to see what Bucharest was like back in the 1970s or 1980s. Her descriptions of Bucharest are very detailed. I discovered in Gabriela Adameşteanu’s prose a very sensory city, reconstituted through all sorts of visual, sound and tactile clues. Her characters are perfectly connected to the rhythm of the city, to its speed, to what’s going on outside, which is a projection of what’s going on inside. Likewise, the urban landscape has a very big impact on the inner life of characters.”

“If you say literary Bucharest you say Mircea Cartarescu. He managed to impose a certain image of Bucharest, an unmistakable one, as he is the Romanian writer most concerned about the image of this city. Any literary emblem of the literary Bucharest should first and foremost contain emblematic phrases of Cartarescu’s prose about the alter-ego city, the body-city or the city as an inferred space, discovered, tapped by means of senses, a city of mythical addresses”, as Andreea Rasuceanu put it.

“I have allotted the largest space in the book to Mircea Cartarescu but without premeditating it. ‘Solenoid’ appeared at a moment when I was preparing to complete the book, so it just happened. I read the book and I realized that it completed that image of Bucharest, which first appeared in another book by Cartarescu, ‘Orbitor’ (Blinding). The city has been given immense coverage in his books; we have the most spectacular city here where various facets of this city are presented; it’s an extension of the narrator’s body, an anatomic structure where the demolition of a building is tantamount to removing a vital organ. On the other hand, an entirely original image is the image of the alter-ego city. It’s an extraordinary metaphor that begins the book ‘Blinding’, with little Mircea in his now famous apartment on ‘Stefan cel Mare’ street who sees his reflection in the window, a reflection that is juxtaposed to the image of the city. This image is used by Mircea Cartarescu throughout the book in different guises. The city becomes a text, one that is written by the narrator at that very moment.”

“The six chapters of the book turn Bucharest into one of the great post-modern cities. It becomes readable and reveals itself to us as a passionate city, deserving of our love. It comes to us in an anthropomorphic guise and we are able to explore its magic core through a palimpsest, as a character that takes shape through the subjective feelings of other characters” — this is how Tania Radu describes the book “Bucharest in Literature. Six Possible Readings of the City”.

6 May 2017
The Observator Cultural Awards

A total of 34 contemporary writers were nominated in the awards’ 6 categories: memoirs; essays and publishing; literary criticism, literary history and literary theory; debut; poetry; and fiction. Radu Andriescu won the best poetry book award, while the best fiction award was shared by writers Radu Cosasu and Radu Pavel Gheo. Human rights activist Gabriel Andreescu used to write a year ago that the “emergence of Observator Cultural in 2000 marked a new stage in the development of ideological footprints in the intellectual community in Romania.” Here is Carmen Musat, the magazine’s editor-in-chief.

Carmen Musat: “These awards are a means of creating an overview of Romanian culture, of Romanian literature today. With new names being added each year to the list of nominated authors and award winners, we are also trying to define the cultural profile of our magazine. It’s a quest for identity in two senses. Our selection and awards outline the cultural profile of our magazine, but also that of the Romanian culture at this point in time.”

16 high school children from six high schools in Bucharest were chosen to hand out the Lyceum Award to fiction writer Vlad Zografi. Carmen Musat tells us more:

Carmen Musat: “We meet these young people and listen to their choices, their arguments. I was impressed by them and I’m not the only one. Just like last year, everybody who attended the awards ceremony was impressed by how they justified their selection, in such a fresh way and using such well-articulated arguments. I think these young people should be encouraged and promoted and given the opportunity to meet Romanian writers and discover their work. Writer Ana Blandiana was telling us this year how surprised she was at the reaction of a child she met when she gave a talk in a school. Although the teacher had told the children they were going to meet Ana Blandiana, the child in question said that was not possible. When he was asked why, he said because he knew all poets were dead. This anecdote tells us very much about how Romanian literature is taught in school. Children have the impression that literature is something that belongs in a museum, not something that is alive and with which they can interact. Our magazine and these awards are trying to demonstrate that literature is alive. We will soon also launch a series of public readings during which high school children will be able to meet Romanian writers, among other cultural figures. Our aim is to challenge and facilitate cultural interaction.”

As part of this year’s awards gala, Observator Cultural awarded prizes for translations not just into Romanian, but of Romanian works as well. The recipients include Veronica D. Niculescu and Joanna Kornas-Warwas of Poland. Here is writer and translator Veronica D. Niculescu.

Veronica D Niculescu: “I realized that in 2007 I started translating my first book by Nabokov without a contract, without cares and obligations, just for passion. The book was brought out in 2008 by a fortuitous turn of events. Polirom Publishers acquired the copyright for Vladimir Nabokov’s works, and it so happened that my translation was accepted for this series. I remember quite well the fragments from the book that determined me to take up translations, they still serve as a personal motto, wherever I am down. I remember how I felt back then and I think it is the ideal mindset to have when translating. The character in that book talks about the “unattainable beauty”, which transpires in dusk light beaming over rooftops, the scent of a flower that no matter how hard you try to breathe in, it can never be yours. And this, I believe, is what we do when we write and read, we’re trying to attain the unattainable”.

29 April 2017
News from Polska: Polish performance in Bucharest

“The Tickler and the Ticklee was the theme of News from Polska a performing arts festival, whose third edition was jointly staged by the Polish Institute in Bucharest and the National Dance Center, over March 31st – April 9th. Larisa Crunteanu, the curator of the News from Polska event explained for us the theme of the festival:

Larisa Crunteanu: “The Tickler and the Ticklee is a theme I set my mind on starting from a concept that was seminal for developmental psychology in early 20th century. The thing is that people cannot tickle themselves. We can have that sensation when somebody else intervenes, but we cannot have it when we try to tickle ourselves. With that paradox in mind, I started thinking of the way in which inner dialogue works. Our mind is filled with other peoples voices, but we do not recognize them as such, we are unable to tell whether what we say to ourselves are our own thoughts or what others tell us. Starting from this alleged paradox, taken further to the mental level through dialogue, I tried to make a selection of works whose concept frame included inner dialogue like a neutral zone, a zone where nobody can tell for sure who the interlocutors are. Its not clear if it is a monologue or a genuine dialogue and who it is were having that inner dialogue with.

Being the one who decides what foreign performances are to be presented at home, on a Romanian stage, entails a certain amount of responsibility. You have to know what and why you bring something before the Romanian audiences, as Larisa Crunteantu says:

Larisa Crunteanu: When I selected those works, I thought of how they would be perceived, how they can fit in and create contrasts with what is available on the Romanian stage at the moment. And I was also interested in the way in which people with a background in dancing relate to text of a play or use certain theater-related procedures in their work. I believe that was exactly why I also chose to label them performing works, so as not to place them by default in the theater-dance area.

The themes approached in the performances presented at the 3rd edition of the News from Polska festival are close to the man of today. “Make Yourself is a performance created by Marta Ziolek, who in this show is joined on stage by five other choreographers and a vocalist. Ziolek presents a futurist universe, which is something resembling a gym, a church and a corporation at the same time. “Make Yourself is a show teeming with vitality, where Marta Ziolek uses, with utmost intensity, the artists energies in order to discuss the topic of identity. Speaking about that, here is Marta Ziolek herself.

Marta Ziolek: “I was interested how, in our diverse society, identity becomes a product, or an object that we can, lets say, become. There is this kind of fiction that is very common for capitalism. Which means that the freedom is something… the freedom actually becomes a bit of a lie. The freedom of individuals is also a sort of prison, actually, in which we are living. So thats the thing about consumerism and a certain way of thinking about ourselves as free subjects. There is this of paradox of contemporary subject, on one hand, its a lot about training yourself and becoming more free and on the other hand its actually becoming a slave or becoming submitted to certain demands or desires. So for me it was interesting if we can emancipate ourselves from that kind of struggle and also, on the other hand if we can expose the sort of mechanism that we are living in. So there is a search for freedom in this performance and I think the freedoms comes from being united in a certain energetic flow – a community and so on.

Marta Ziółek set for herself the task of creating a show that the audience would easily relate to. Actually, “Make Yourself is a big hit in Poland and was a big hit in Bucharest as well.

One of the choreographers who featured in “Make Yourself, Ramona Nagabczynska, was invited to take part in the festival with the pURe solo performance. “PURe is a work about the natural body, starting from the Ur-matter concept created by the renowned Polish stage director and painter Tadeusz Kantor. According to the aforementioned concept, as Ramona Nagabczynska explains, matter has an inherent power and it is all up to the artist to listen to what matter says, which, in our context, is the body itself.

Ramona Nagabczynska: “I have a certain interest in the body as an object and the sort of the process of the performer which is sort of auto-referential for the piece itself, so very often I actually use what happens with the performer during the performance as a sort of the base of the theme of the piece itself. So transformation is a very important idea for me, its something that interests me very much. As a performer, I take this knowledge I have from performing into my choreographic work. Its one thing and also, Im quite interested in sort of using the body as a tool in a more kind of a visual sense, so bringing dance away from theater and closer to visual arts. I dont want to make a very intellectual work. I mean, at the end of the day I am interested in the effect of things on people.“

The News from Polska Festival ended with a musical performance titled Exit Promises, given by the Australian-born artist ZONE-L (Laura Hunt). Speaking about the performance, here is the artist herself.

ZONE-L: “I have worked with sound now for over 8 years in different capacities and in every single realm of sound. Im interested in how it affects people. This sounds really obvious, actually, when you say it because sound is such a huge mobilizer and it changes peoples lives, people revolve their life around different sounds, but I think Im interested in how I can harness that in some way in my music and I guess its a little bit political as well, so Im making a comment on the culture of constantly wanting to be better and needing to be better and in a way Im kind of playing up to it in my music by using samples that say that you will live a better life if you listen to this track for ten minutes, so Im taking samples from YouTube, from DIY self-help culture and making dance music out of it.

The curator of the News from Polska festival Larisa Crunteanu explains why she invited an artist from outside the Polish cultural sphere.

Larisa Crunteanu: Laura Hunt is an Australian-born artist whom I chose to invite precisely in a bid to offer a counterpoise to the increasingly nationalistic tendencies of todays Poland. The Polish Institute was very open to the idea of presenting a stance coming from an allegedly exotic area. At the same time, many of the guest artists share this condition, that of precarious workers, traveling from one country to another, artists who export their works and practices there where they can find a bit of support.

22 April 2017
Premieres at the National Theatre in Sibiu

Several new plays of the Radu Stanca National Theatre
in Sibiu, presented these days in a short theatre season, have also been
included in the programme of the 24th Sibiu International Theatre
Festival.

Stage director Cristian Juncu, best known in Romania
mainly due to the contemporary plays he has worked on, is regarded as an expert
in Neil LaBute’s plays. Three of them, The Furies, Helter Skelter and
Happy Hour, were put together in the show Happy Holidays, staged at the
theatre in Sibiu. The three short plays question the concept of
faithfulness. Actress Ofelia Popii
features in two of them.

Ofelia Popii: The texts take hold of you. You feel them
really close. They have depth, but at the same time are somehow light. They’re
easy to perform. In the first story, my character is quite challenging in terms
of a different type of theatrical language that is used. I’m silent most of the
times, I just listen and react. Nevertheless, I must be very energetic,
present, attentive and even incisive throughout the play, until the end when I
have a monologue. The last part is quite different. It’s overwhelming, it’s
demanding, a contemporary Medea. So the whole play has been a challenge. I
think this is a very good play, very well thought, very well put together and
we, the actors, feel great performing it.

Stage director Eugen Jebeleanu lives in Paris and his
professional life unfolds both in Romania and France. When directing a show, he
focuses on analysing the individual’s identity in relation to society, to
himself and to the people around him. He helps minority voices be heard, the
stories of the people who are usually ignored. The play Families was staged
in Sibiu with theatre students and started from the idea of doing something
that speaks about actors.

Eugen Jebeleanu: I decided to write a play about them,
which I entitled Families. I wanted to look at the concept of family, to find
out what it means to them in today’s society, which its mechanisms are, and how
an individual’s identity is built in relation to this micro-society that is a
family. Hence, the multiple views. Of course, it was not my intention to come
up with solutions or to give verdicts. I only shed light on some questions,
some problems and realities of the present.

The premieres of the Sibiu National Theatre also
include a musical, The Rocky Horror Show, staged by Cosmin Chivu, head of the
Acting and Directing Department of Pace University in New York. The Rocky
Horror Show is a famous musical written by Richard O’Brien, which premiered in
1973 in London. A newly engaged couple on their way to their professor, reach
the home of a mad scientist, Dr. Frank N. Furter, an alien from the planet
Transsexual, Transylvania. For the cast, Cosmin Chivu did not choose
professional actors, but third-year and post-graduate students, who, he says,
are crazy enough to do new things and have extraordinary potential for
playing in a musical. Cosmin Chivu told us about the challenges of working on
the Rocky Horror Show.

Cosmin Chivu: Finding a middle way, finding a creative
solution, preserving the sophisticated elements of the show without getting
into what might be defined as prejudiced. I believe the story is very
interesting. This is a comedy. So I think the most important thing is to allow
the audience to laugh, to not take things very seriously. This was one of the
most important things we had to discover and put together during rehearsals. We
didn’t focus too much on how this would have been staged somewhere else, in the
US or in London, where this musical was created. We tried to give it a local
flavour, to bring it to our part of the world a little, without any compromise
and without questioning its artistic value in any way.

Gianina Carbunariu’s
Sprechen Sie Schweigen? (Do you speak Silence) is a show co-produced by the
Romanian and German sections of the Radu Stanca National Theatre within the
Human Trade Network. The project is made jointly with artists from Germany,
India and Burkina Faso, at the invitation of German director Clemens Bechtel.
Gianina Carbunariu has chosen the theme of labour outsourcing, inspired by a
protest put up by the Romanian workers at the Mall of Berlin – Mall of Shame, a
case given extensive media coverage in 2014. The authorities responded with
silence.

Gianina Carbunariu: This
mechanism of silence interested me very much. It’s all about the silence of the
workers, those who had to put up with situations like these and chose not to
speak about them because they knew they were not going to get help either from
the Romanian state or from the German one. On the other hand, it’s also about
this ear-splitting silence from both the Romanian and German authorities.
Furthermore, because I was working with this team from Sibiu, it was all very
personal because many of them had relatives working abroad. We also had these
two actors who came from Germany to Sibiu to play their parts in the show. And
thus the topic has been defined by this experience of our joint efforts,
Romanians, Germans, Hungarians. And this seems very important to me. It’s not a
show about outsourcing the workforce, it’s about the dreams we all have, about
what we owe to these people who risk their lives and health to work abroad.
There is a touching moment when an actress says, during the show: Mom took
care of old people in Germany to keep me and my brother in college. The fact
that I am on stage performing tonight is also thanks to her work.

Sprechen Sie Schweigen will be performed in Freiburg
in June.

15 April 2017
One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival

“Normal Autistic Film”, a documentary made by the Czech filmmaker Miroslav Janek, is the award-winning production of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival, an event whose 10th edition has recently come to a close. “We believe the production we’ve selected does not limit itself to the world of autistic children alone, but it conveys a message to all of us. What we can learn from these children is to value our own distinctiveness. By selecting this film, we actually took the courage to show who we really are. Everyone’s normality turns out to be different. Through various frames and characters, the film reveals the fact that there is no such thing as one single reality, but different perspectives on that”. That was the rationale of the judging panel made up of high-school students who bestowed the prize after the screening of the 10 films that entered the competition.

Filmmaker Miroslav Janek, who only managed to be in Bucharest when the festival began, offered a thank-you video recording to members of the judging panel and filmgoers. Fear was the main theme at the 10th edition of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival. “We live in a global world, yet we tend to return to times past, to establish new borders, to shut ourselves behind walls. Corrupt politicians from all over the world take advantage of our weaknesses and fears and seize power by exploiting them. Some of us are more determined to go against the flow, sacrificing all they’ve got. The films screened during the One World Romania festival explore the origin of our fears and how we can overcome them.

Here is One World Romania director Alexandru Solomon with details on that: ”At this edition, fear stood out of all the other themes related to politics, to the general atmosphere, which, since we had started the selection, got worse all around the world. And it’s mainly about the fear linked to populist, nationalist, homophobic trends. But it’s about more specific topics as well, such as problems related to dysfunctions in Romania’s healthcare system but also in other countries, problems that in turn fuel our fears.”

Debates bringing together filmgoers and guests in the festival, just like in the previous editions, were very interesting, and some of them had to conclude only because of the following screening, according to the timetable. The festival progressed as civil society itself progressed, just as the concern grew more intense for the fight against corruption and for freedom of expression.

Here is One World Romania director Alexandru Solomon, once again: ”The festival’s managing board has made its position clear all throughout these years in this respect and we rely heavily on NGOs and associations that can adopt a documentary, an documentary that could support their cause, a film that can speak about the problems they raise. So the documentary film can also be viewed as some sort of market, a market of ideas where filmmakers, NGOs and civil society meet. Notwithstanding, the role of a documentary is not that of solving various problems. What the documentary film is capable of achieving, as compared to mainstream media, is the presentation of a more insightful image, viewed also from a more sympathetic perspective, that of the society we live in, as documentary filmmakers are people who spend a lot of time in the company of ‘ideas’, approaching the people they film in a very special way. And also in comparison with the media, directors of documentary films are a little less pressed for time and necessities. It is quite visible that we managed to start a dialogue, within the One World Romania Festival. Furthermore, the public has become more open, more capable of expressing their opinions, as compared to what happened 9 years ago, when the festival began.”

The 10th edition of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival short-listed 6 Romanian productions, three of which were screened in the “Romania on the move” section, while three other projects which are still works in progress were screened in the “Romania Work-in-progress” section. As part of the festival, Claudiu Mitcu and Ileana Bîrsan presented an edited fragment of “The Trial” a documentary film tracing the case of Mihai Moldoveanu, a former officer in the Romanian Army who had to serve a 25-year prison sentence because of a murder about which he was adamant in stating he did not commit.

With details on that, here is Ileana Bârsan: ”We wanted to see whether this topic was of any interest to anyone and if the fragment we edited and which is part of our film, is actually working. We try to present this case in as balanced a way as possible. We wanted to get feedback also because our film has only one character, as we were denied access to other voices. It was not our fault, as people in the system, prosecutors and judges, who were involved in previous trials or in the new one, declined our invitation to dialogue. The most difficult part was to think out a film with one single character, and to refrain from providing our own take on all that. In the 20 minute long fragment we have presented we tried to select stuff which was coherent but also intriguing, yet without providing the entire information, at once being unbiased. It was a useful exercise, the attempt also helped us with the final editing.”

More than 11,000 filmgoers went to the One World Romania Festival this year. Some of the productions screened during this year’s edition as well as some documentary films screened in previous editions have been included in the 2017 selection of the KineDok alternative distribution program.

8 April 2017
2017 Gopo Awards Gala

The feature film Sieranevada directed by Cristi Puiu
was the big winner at the 11th edition of the Gopo Awards Gala, an
event venued by the I.L.Caragiale National Theatre of Bucharest. Sieranevada won 6 Gopo awards for best
film, best director, best script, best actress in a lead role, best actress in
a supporting role and best editing. Selected in the official competition of the
2016 Cannes Film Festival, Cristi Puiu’s forth feature film has been well
received by the international media.

The British newspaper The Guardian
described Sieranevada as food for thought, while its author was deemed as
one of the most influential cinematic voices of the century. The film’s
action is theatrically set mainly in one modest Romanian apartment where a
large family has gathered for something between a memorial service and a wake
for Emil, who has just died. The film focuses on his eldest son Lary (Mimu
Branescu), a harassed, bearded, overweight doctor who turns up for the party
having just had a huge row with his wife about getting his daughter the wrong
Disney costume for her school play.

The family
gathering does not unfold as expected. Ana Ciontea, who got the award for best
actress in a supporting role, said upon receiving the award:

I remember the day when I auditioned for
this role. I was extremely nervous. I continued to feel that way throughout the
entire film. I want to thank Cristi Puiu, as I found myself in his film.
Sieranevada is family to me. I also want to thank each of my colleagues and
crew members, all those who voted me and gave me the opportunity to be part of
the large family of Romanian cinema.

In his turn, director Cristi Puiu, who also won the awards
for best director and best script, thanked his family and director Lucian
Pintilie:

First of all, I want to thank my wife Anca
and my girls. It’s difficult to be a scriptwriter because this requires peace
of mind and I have this at home. I also thank Lucian Pintilie, because back in
1999 he read the script that I wrote with writer Razvan Radulescu, the script
that I later turned into film, and he encouraged me. I felt encouraged and kept
on writing. I want to thank you as well.

Director Cristi Puiu dedicated the award for best
director to actor Sorin Medeleni, who was part of the cast but who died before
the film was released.

Actor
Valentin Uritescu, aged 75, received a lifetime achievement award. Boasting an
over 50-year long career in theatre and film, Valentin Uritescu has played a
wide range of supporting roles such as Sergeant Saptefrati in the TV series
Lights and Shadows directed by Andrei Blaier, the same character in Sergiu
Nicolaescu’s feature We, on the Front Lines, or Vasile in the film The
Contest directed by Dan Pita. A graduate of the Ion Luca Caragiale Institute
of Theatre and Cinema in Bucharest in 1963, he was hired by the Maria Filotti
Theatre in Braila, Eastern Romania, and five years later, he moved to the Youth
Theatre in Piatra Neamt, Eastern Romania. He was an actor at that theatre for
13 years, which he deems as the most important period of his life.

After he
had been singled out by stage director Liviu Ciulei, Valentin Uritescu
performed in the productions of the Bulandra Theatre in Bucharest. His maiden
autobiographical volume That’s What I Am, a Fool was launched by Humanitas
Publishers in 2011. Two years later, his book of memoirs devoted to his father
and entitled Take Care of Your Good Nature was brought out by the same
publishing-house. In 2016, the artist’s book of memoirs Haunted by Other
People’s Lives was launched by Ars Docendi Publishers.

Here is what Valentin
Uritescu said at the 11th Gopo Awards Gala:

I was a first-year student when I made my
debut in the film A Bomb Has Been Stolen by Ion Popescu Gopo. I uttered just
one line: Let’s go!. It’s been over 50 years ever since and I have played
dozens of film and theatre roles. My third book titled Haunted by Other People’s
Lives features all the characters that I played and haunted me. As I’ve just
said, it’s been over 50 years since I made my debut in Gopo’s film and now,
with this award, Gopo has returned to me. Let me thank those who sent him to me
and let me thank you, who reward me with your applause and congratulate me 50 years after my debut.

Bogdan Mirica’s debut feature was awarded five Gopo
trophies, including the best supporting actor award, which went to Vlad Ivanov,
and the best actor award won by Gheorghe Visu. 21 films were launched in 2016;
two of them, the blockbusters Selfie69 and Two Lottery Tickets were seen by
over 100,000 spectators and had over 2 million lei worth of returns, receiving
the audience award at the Gopo Awards Gala.

1 April 2017
Truth, manipulation and propaganda in documentary films

Film critic Ileana Birsan and documentary filmmakers Alexandru Solomon, Oana Giurgiu and Claudiu Mitcu were the guests of the latest event held by the Carturesti bookshop and CINEPUB dedicated to documentary films and their public.

A well-documented history of Romanian Jews. 133 years ago, a small community from Moinesti leaves for the Holy Land to establish one of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine. Since then, the journey of the Jews to Israel has been intertwined with the history of modern Romania in a love/hate relationship whose influences we won’t be able to assess anytime soon. The story is presented visually in Dadaist style, thus paying tribute to the initiators of this movement, Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco, two Jews originating from Romania. This is a short summary of the 2015 documentary film called Aliyah DaDa directed by Oana Giurgiu. Asked why she chose documentary film making for a career, Oana Giurgiu said this kind of film leaves a testimony over time. She also said it was regrettable that not many documentary films were made in Romania in the 1990s. Oana Giurgiu:

“Before this film, I was involved in cinema vérité and television documentary. For me it was important to go beyond my limits. It took me one year or two to find an appropriate working formula, because I found it very hard to break out of my comfort zone. For this film I had many materials from the archives and very many photos, portrait photos, because at the time only such types of photos used to be made. And if Dadaists did it otherwise, I decided to build with the help of collages”.

Claudiu Mitcu directed many documentaries among which “Australia” produced by HBO, which received the Romanian Filmmakers Union prize in 2010. The French Embassy in Romania granted him the Human Rights Prize for the documentaries Australia and Two of us. In the debate held on the occasion of the Week of Documentaries on CINEPUB, Claudiu Mitcu said that for him the documentary was important because it presented real-life, contemporary stories, important for society. Claudiu Mitcu:

“Many of my films are visually ugly because on many occasions I do not direct. I am only behind the camera. But I believe that, in this way, films are more credible, and that it is more useful for the viewer to see in this way the topics and stories that I am trying to present. Even if it is not filmed in a beautiful way, even if certain things are lost through a less artistic way of filming, the message is stronger and more credible. Of the 7 documentaries, two are similar in style. Each documentary has its own style and it is actually the nature of the topic that gives its style.”

Alexandru Solomon has written and directed over 15 documentaries including The Man with 1000 Eyes (2001), The Great Communist Robbery (2004), Cold Waves (2007), Kapitalism (2010) and Four Homelands (2015). Taking over Oana Giurgiu’s comparison between the media and documentary films, Solomon pointed out that although most of the stories a documentary can tell may appear in the media as well, that doesn’t diminish the importance of documentaries. In his opinion, the media is some sort of a fast food whereas a documentary is a slow food, giving society a chance to ponder on its problems. Solomon also went on to say the fact that the transition of the 1990s had not been depicted in a documentary was a huge loss.

“The discussion about a documentarian’s objectivity seems old-fashioned to me. A documentarian tries to give an angle over some part of the reality. There is the possibility to choose the direction you want to depict. And the fact that you place the camera in a certain place, it means that you’ve made a choice. So, there is this conflict, between your choice and the moment you want to capture on camera.”

Alexandru Solomon is also promoting documentaries in his capacity as director of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival, an event due over March 13th and 19th. During the festival, 60 documentaries selected out of the 13 hundred enlisted are to be screened in theatres around Bucharest. Several related events, such as debates, workshops and exhibitions are also to take place during the festival. Fear and its various outcomes is the main theme of this 10th edition of One World Romania. Corrupt politicians from around the world take advantage of our fears and weaknesses to manipulate us. The weak are being harassed daily by those in power but some of the most determined are running against the flood risking everything to beat the system. One World Romania films go back to the origins of our fears, presenting ways we can overcome them. Among the festival’s traditional themes is justice, a theme very popular both in USA and Romania. There is a festival section entitled “Fearless Justice” presenting cases of citizens from Russia, Chad, Peru and Mexico who are fighting for justice or who get together in order to combat state aggression. (Translated by C. Mateescu, L. Simion and D. Bilt)

18 March 2017
National Dance Center Hosts Performance dedicated to Isidore Isou

The British mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg and French composer Frédéric Acquaviva each presented a musical performance inspired from Isidore Isous works.

Born in the northern Romanian town of Botosani in 1925 and settling in France after World War 2, in 1945, Isidore Isou is still little known in Romania, which is precisely why this event was staged in Bucharest, and will be continued with other projects as well.

As for the staging of the event at the National Dance Center in Bucharest, curator Igor Mocanu explained: Isidore Isou, just like any other artist with diverse, if not all-encompassing, interests, put together a manifesto and wrote a number of theoretical texts on dance. As a counterpoint to the jumps specific to German Expressionism in the early stages of the dance avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, he came up with the choreography of falls, of plunging bodies. Weve been toying with the idea of doing something that focuses on this element of Isous work, at the National Dance Center in Bucharest. Apart from their interests in contemporary art, be they sound-related or not, they are very good analysts of Isidore Isous work. Actually, Frederic owns an impressive collection of Isous books and works.“

The performance dedicated to Isidore Isou started with the screening of a two-minute excerpt from a documentary made by Orson Welles and titled “Around the World in Saint-Germain des Prés. The documentary was filmed on location at the Fischbacher Bookshop in Paris in 1955, and the footage features Isidore Isou and Maurice Lemaître, alongside Jacques Spacagna and Orson Welles.

In her performance, mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg included a few works created over 1947-1984. “Weve chosen a selection of works which go across quite a large timeframe, from 1945 to 1984. So Ive chosen a work, which was one of his earliest works, Neige/Snow. The genius, part of the genius of Isou, is that he takes a situation he was in and transforms it into a form, rather that going for the theatricalisation of it. So its Neige, then Im also going to perform some of his soundless poems, which are about gesture and implication. Its fascinating from the point of view of being a performer, because its such rich material, its such a wealth of different sounds there, and I also love the disassociation of sound from meaning, its really on…maybe quite a shallow level is very good fun. It feels very nice in my mouth, its got good mouth feel.“

Towards the end of his life, Isidore Isou took a closer interest in music, and the second part of the event in Bucharest included a piece from that very period of time. The piece is Symphony no 4, Juvenal, composed in 2001 and arranged by Frédéric Acquaviva in 2003. The French composer met Isou in the last ten years of the latters life and together they wrote a couple of symphonies orchestrated by Acquaviva.

Frederic Acquaviva has also described Isidore Isous music works: “He left Romania just after the war and arrived in Paris in 1945 and his idea was to do Lettrist poetry, which was a mix between poetry and music, so thats what later most people say when they use the term sound poetry. But in fact Lettrist poetry is a kind of poetry that uses only the voice and the movements and sounds that you could do with your body, so its a kind of body sound and its much in advance because its a totally abstract poetry. His music is basically like,…it sounds also a bit primitive because its also with kinds of loops. Its very bizarre. Juvenal is the fourth symphony because we did together the five symphonies and this one, because I orchestrated it with a choir, and so I would say that you dont really know which time you are, which country and thats quite interesting and its quite specific.

Composer Frédéric Acquaviva has already organized a series of events in Europe dedicated to Isidore Isou, and is set to continue his projects. Frédéric Acquaviva: “Ive done many things already, because Ive done like several exhibitions already, Ive done also several books on him and Ive done a book with the Romanian Cultural Institute in Stockholm about his hypergraphic novels, it was also done, some fantastic things in the novel., but also we are here in the Center of Dance, hes also done some fantastic choreographies, that are like these 40 years beyond this time, because when he wrote in the 50s is what you get in contemporary dance in the 90s in France, for example, and.. so, right now Im working on several projects on him, but more specifically, the first big monograph on his paintings and artworks. So I hope its done and will be published this year and, by, bizarrely, its Les Editions du Griffon who published the first monograph on Brancusi in the 50s.

11 March 2017
Tudor Aaron Istodor, winner of the Shooting Stars program

After being short-listed for the prestigious program of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, Tudor Aaron Istodor impressed the competition’s jury with the very natural way in which he manages to approach any part.

Tudor Aaron Istodor is a graduate of the “I.L.Caragiale” University of Theatre and Cinematography, class of 2009, and has been playing in both theatre and film productions. Ever since he was a student he has collaborated with famous directors such as Lucian Pintilie, Radu Muntean or Paul Negoescu. He has played in three films by Fanny Ardant (“Rouges sont les reves”, “Cadences obstinees”, “Ashes and Blood”) and in “Mrs. Christina” by Alexandru Maftei. He also played the part of Edward 2nd in the BBC series “The Plantagenets” and can be often seen on the stage of Godot Café-Theatre or the Jewish State Theatre in Bucharest. The part thanks to which Tudor Aaron Istodor was selected for the Shooting Stars programme of the 2017 Berlinale is that in the film “The Fixer” by Adrian Sitaru, which was premiered in Romania in late January. The film tells the story of Radu, an intern at the Bucharest offices of France Presses who dreams to become a journalist.

Tudor Aaron Istodor told us what made him accept the part in “The Fixer” and how his collaboration with director Adrian Sitaru was: “I liked the script enormously. I liked all of Adrian Sitaru’s films and wanted to be in one of them. His films are full of sensitivity, have many layers and reveal themselves gradually. The actors playing in Adrian Sitaru’s films are also extraordinary. When you see this kind of film you want to be in it. So when I was called for an audition I was very excited. It’s a very humane film whose protagonist is a fixer, a jack-of-all-trades who fixes meetings of foreign journalists travelling to his home country, in this case a group of French journalists who want to interview a repatriated under-age prostitute. The collaboration with Adrian Sitaru was exceptional. He is a director who loves actors, is open to improvisation, knows exactly what he wants but also likes to discover things together with his actors and it’s a joy working with him.”

“I think it’s good to play different roles, both in terms of characters and style of acting”, says Tudor Aaron Istodor. He also told us how he prepared for his role in the film “The Fixer”: “The protagonist wants to become a journalist, but he is not yet a journalist. He is 30-years-old, he is neither a boy nor a fully-grown man, but at an age one still makes mistakes while trying to prove one’s worth. I have done a lot of research with the help of Adrian Silisteanu, a director of photography and scriptwriter. With his help I found out more about the occupation of the main protagonist because he worked for a while as a fixer himself. Apart from his occupation, I was very interested in the human side of my character, Radu Patru. Because irrespective of what happens to him and irrespective of the job he has, it is about how far one is willing to go to reach one’s aims. Generally, great movies and scripts are about something human and have something in common. And you can identify yourself with one of the characters in such movies no matter your job or the culture you come from”.

A chip off the old block as he is the son of two famous actors, Maia Morgenstern and Claudiu Istodor, Tudor Aaron Istodor confesses that, in his childhood, he never dreamt of becoming an actor. On the contrary, he was eager that his parents finished rehearsals so that they could play with him. In time, however, he realized he was meant for this job and he resigned himself to being an actor.

“I very much like to ask mom and dad attend my premieres. Especially because the first show is magic, and even if it is not the best, it is the first public performance. It is a moment when you are not very sure of yourself, when you want to show something and naturally you need favourable energies. My parents do have a very good energy when they come to my shows. I believe they are the best spectators. That is why I ask them to come to my first show, to be there and support me, to give me their feedback because I have big trust in them. I am very nervous and I hope I’ll be nervous not only at premieres but also at each performance. Nervousness is different from stage fright, and it’s good that it is so. Because once you are no longer nervous, than it’s high time you gave up performing. When you think you know everything and you’re not hesitant at all, you don’t feel vulnerable, you don’t ask yourself if what you are doing you’re doing well, then you cannot discover new things.”

Tudor Aaron Istodor is the 7th Romanian actor participating in this program after Cosmina Stratan (2014), Ada Condeescu (2013), Ana Ularu (2012), Dragoş Bucur (2010), Anamaria Marinca (2008) and Maria Popistaşu (2007).

4 March 2017
Romanian production “Ana, mon amour“ scoops award at the Berlinale

The award went to film editor Dana Bunescu. The production has been in Romanian theatres as of March 3rd, shortly after its international premiere. Having won the Golden Bear with “Child’s Pose”, filmmaker Calin Peter Nezter has returned on the big screen with a new film, which gives an insight into the dynamics of the most significant relationships in the life of a man.

“Ana, mon amour” is the analysis of a love story, an atypical insight into the most tense and delicate moments in the life of a couple. Călin Peter Netzer, Cezar Paul Bădescu and Iulia Lumânare wrote the screenplay, inspired from Cezar Paul Bădescu’s novel, “Luminiţa, mon amour”. However, Cezar Paul Badescu made it clear that the film was Netzer’s, and the novel was just the starting point. We asked Cezar-Paul Badescu how he felt after the first screening.

Cezar Paul Badescu: ”It’s kind of odd, because although I knew what was going on in the film, I was ravished when I first saw it. Actually, this is a film that ‘digs’ into those who see it. It invites spectators to an inner investigation, to go very deep into themselves. The film spins the yarn of a story which is completely different from that of the novel. Filmmaker Calin Peter Netzer opted for a different approach, he chose to pursue something different from what I was interested in my novel. In earnest, the basic storyline is the same. It’s about a love relationship that has an ingredient which makes it special, a disease of the nervous system. And that condition, even though it is not very serious, takes its toll on the couple’s relationship. It’s not about the book being made into a film, the screenplay and the film only start off from my novel. When I wrote the screenplay, Calin Peter Netzer selected a couple of scenes from my book, we wrote them into the screenplay and then, together, we developed some stories, you can’t find in the book and which are mainly Calin’s stories.“

Actress Diana Cavaliotti, known for her roles in ‘Recollections from the Golden Age — 2” and the TV series ‘One step Ahead’ and ‘A Mad Week’, has worked with filmmaker Călin Peter Netzer for the first time in her career.

Diana Cavaliotti: ”The experience I had was shattering. It took a long time to shoot the film, rehearsals also took a very long time, about three months, and everything was so intense that I felt each and every scene as if they were my life. For six months of my life I was busy with ‘Ana, mon amour’ from morning till night, round the clock. Building up such a part means placing yourself into some rather difficult situations. Then there’s the way I worked with the director of the film, Călin Peter Netzer, and everything I did in preparation for the film. For instance, I had to see a psychoanalyst. These are things that really take you out of any comfort zone that you might have. And I believe that this film managed, and it is good that it did so, to shatter all the comfort away.”

Apart from Diana Cavallioti and Mircea Postelnicu, the cast of “Ana, mon amour” also includes Adrian Titieni, Vlad Ivanov, Carmen Tănase, Vasile Muraru, Tania Popa and Igor Caras Romanov. For actor Mircea Postelnicu, the role he played in “Ana, mon amour” was also his first lead role in a feature film.

Mircea Postelnicu: ”I gained a lot from that experience and especially from the encounter with Calin, Iulia, Diana and the topic itself. For me, it meant a lot and I realized it opened up some valves that had for long been shut, and I’m referring to the psycho-analytical side of the film. Very briefly, the story is about a relationship which is a bit unhealthy and sick since it very much relies on some projections and thoughts Ana and Toma have nurtured, building up their relationship on a totally unsound foundation. It’s about some sort of a quest that both characters have initiated, in a bid to regain their balance and get back to the basics of that relation and to the truth lying behind it. And in a way, in the long run the story is everybody’s quest, a quest into one’s self. It’s about a quest and a path the two characters take and about how each of them gets their answers and reaches their balance “

“Ana, mon amour” is Călin Peter Netzer’s fourth feature film. He is the author of Maria (2003), which received an award at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival, ‘The Medal of Honor’ (2009), winner of the Silver Alexander Award in Thessalonica, ‘Child’s Pose’ (2013) a production with the biggest box office in the past 15 years. “Ana, mon amour” is a Parada Film Production, co-produced with Augenschein Filmproduktion (Germany) and Sophie Dulac Productions (France).

25 February 2017
Producer Ada Solomon is in the race for Oscars

The awards gala will be held on the 26th of February at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The film, which was shot almost entirely in Romania, is the only title from 2016 to be included among the 21st century’s 100 greatest films by BBC Culture. “Toni Erdmann” was first screened in the official competition of the Cannes Festival last year, where it impressed both critics and the public.

It won the FIPRESCI award granted by the International Federation of Film Critics and was one of the critics’ favourite for the Palme D’Or. “The recognition enjoyed by the film is overwhelming. Nominations come and go, the film will remain. The fact that, because of this international recognition, the film is watched by more and more people is the best reward for all those who worked on the film”, says Ada Solomon, the first Romanian producer to be nominated for an Oscar.

She told us more: “For me, box office success is not the most important thing; a film should have something to say and raise questions, whether about our personal choices, the path of history or what happens in society today or in the recent past. These are the criteria by which I decide whether to get involved in a project or not. With regard to international projects, minority co-productions or foreign films in which I become involved as a producer, they are in most cases connected to Romania and a certain way of looking at Romania. I’m not interested in just any film that is set in Romania or whose plot is in some way linked to Romania. My main focus is on what the film says and how it says it, first of all through its script. Perhaps it’s about films that I would personally want to see at the cinema.”

“Toni Erdmann” is about Winfried, an eccentric and a practical-joker who, after he retires from work, makes a surprise visit to his daughter, a career woman working on an important project in Bucharest. The prestigious American magazine “Variety” has described Maren Ade’s third feature film as a “unique study of an estranged but mutually depressive father and daughter” and a “humane, hilarious triumph.” The cast includes Peter Simonischek and Sandra Muller, Michael Wittenborn, Thomas Loibl, Trystan Putter, Hadewych Minis and Lucy Russell, as well as the Romanian actors Vlad Ivanov, Ingrid Bisu, Alexandru Papadopol and Victoria Cocias.

The co-producer of the film, Ada Solomon once again: “I have always been interested in the topic of uprooting, in the life of those luxury nomads, the highly-skilled experts who have jobs far from their families, from their friends, far from the culture they have grown up in. I am interested in the way that kind of uprooting affects those people emotionally. I looked at the expat community in Romania, and I also wanted to turn that into a movie topic, as it seems to me people talk so much about the world we live in and about the way we ignore ourselves as human beings at the expense of some ideals that we pursue and that only provide financial security and status. But those ideals fail to provide emotional security. So on the one hand, it’s about the choices we make in life, about whether we opt for building up a career or a relationship with our loved ones, about how we forget about them (and we do forget about them very often), about how often we respond to their attempts to reconnect with us and how strongly we regret there were times when we did not listen to them or we did not hear them at all.“

Ada Solomon says she was straight away persuaded by the project initiated by Maren Ade, who researched the topic very thoroughly. With details on that, here is Ada Solomon once again: “Maren Ade is a filmmaker with a very broad vision and a clear focus on what research means. And some of the best parts of this experience, which lasted for almost two and a half years, were that I got to become more familiar with the documentary and with researching and preparing a topic, and the way she chose to document her screenwriting and how long the research activity took her, so that everything should be as credible as possible and rely on a realistic structure. And all along we exchanged hundreds of thoughts, we had countless talks, she spent a lot of time in Romania. It goes without saying that her extensive research work actually began at home, as she read stuff published in Romania, but also materials published in the international press.“

Alongside Cristian Mungiu’s feature film “Graduation,” “Toni Erdmann” has been nominated for the French Cesar Awards in the best foreign film category.

11 February 2017
The National Theater in Chisinau, on tour in Romania

Over January 19th and 27th, 2017, the ‘Mihai Eminescu’ National Theater
in Chisinau was on tour in Romania, as part of a project titled Romanian
Theater in Bucharest, Iasi and Chisinau. It was a project that took off at the
initiative of the National Theater in the Republic of Moldova, which in 2014
opened the season of the National Theater in Bucharest with its stage
performances. A week later, the Bucharest National Theater traveled to Chisinau
for a week of Romanian theatre in Moldova.

Such an exchange of tours has become
normal and even tradition, according to actor and stage director Petru Hadarca,
who is also the manager of the Mihai Eminescu National Theater:

It has enjoyed
and still enjoys success. The audience has its own expectations, in Chisinau as
well as in Bucharest. We usually arrive during the week when the Unification of
the Romanian Principalities is celebrated in Bucharest and Iasi. And for the
week when Bessarabia’s Unification with Romania is celebrated, on March 27, the
National Theater in Bucharest and the Vasile Alecsandri theater in Iasi come to
us. Theater doesn’t need borders. This is the Romanian theater of Bucharest -
Iasi – Chisinau. Plays are in Romanian. As Nichita Stanescu used to say ‘our
country is the Romanian language’.

The
‘Mihai Eminescu’ National Theater in Chisinau has presented in Bucharest
and Iasi three successful stage performances of its most recent productions.
One of the them is In Your Charming Eyes’, directed by Alexandu Vasilache,
after short stories by Gib Mihaescu (1894 – 1953), who used to be a member of
the artistic committee of the National Theater in Chisinau. The other two premieres
brought on tour in Romania are Anything to Declare? by Georges Feydeau,
directed by Petru Hadârcă and The Big House
by Ion Druţă, directed by Alexandru Cozub.

The actors of the
National Theater in Chisinau perform only in Romanian and their repertoire
comprises various pieces of world drama. With details on that, here is stage
director Petru Hadârcă again:

We try to
tackle mostly topics related to us, to Chisinau and Bessarabia. Since it is a
national theater, 80 per cent of the plays are part of the national drama
rapertoire. We try to cater for the taste of various categories of audience. We
also have a show created by the theater’s young actors, on a tough, dramatic
topic in our people’s history, based on the testimonies collected by Alexei
Vakulovski, ‘Children of the famine’.
It is a stage performance dealing with the famine of 1946-1947, during the
communist regime, when around 500 thousand Bessarabians died. And this is a
painful thing, by all means. And I take a look at our audience. There are
people in the audience who have gone through that experience. They were
children back then. And they come to watch the play with a lot of interest. It
is a memory exercise. I have to say that the audience in Chisinau is really
special, we love them just as much as they love us. Unfortunately, there are
people in our society that make a spectacle of themselves in Parliament, on
television. We laugh and say that they are those who are acting, while, we on
stage, are just being natural.

During the tour in
Bucharest, Petru Hadarca also held a conference titled Documents, an invincible
power against historical speculations. Two volumes were launched at the
conference, comprising documents about the history of the Chisinau theatre,
gathered from the Bucharest National Archives and the library of the Romanian
Academy. They are titled The Genesis of the National Theatre in Chisinau:
1918-1960 by Iurie Colesnic, and A Chronicle of the Mihai Eminescu National
Theatre in Chisinau: 1818-1930, a volume edited by actor and director Petru
Hadarca., the general manager of the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre.

Here is
Petru Hadarca himself:

Each time I
think about those documents, I feel joyful like a child, because I discovered
in the archives the deed for the setting up of the National Theatre in October
1921, bearing the header and the stamp of the of the National Theatre in
Chisinau. It’s great! Because, in the Soviet period, historians used to say the
building hosting the theater had been erected by two Soviet architects between
1953-1954. But the documents that we have found tell a different story. In
1930, the theatre was already up, designed just like the Athenaeum in
Bucharest. They speak of successes different from what they were in the
interwar period, things that were taboo before 1990 and even after. Now that these
books have been published, a certain part of the press has already started to
attack us, to contest us and impose their own point of view, because there are
still many people who choose to forget real history and remember only what they
want. What I have gathered in these books makes me feel proud and I can say
that the National Theatre has had a very beautiful history. It’s for the first
time this year that I’ve said how many seasons there have been, because we
didn’t know before. So, for the first time I said ‘This is the 95th
season of the theatre’ .

The Mihai Eminescu
theatre in Chisinau has two halls: the Big Hall, with 400 seats, and the Studio
Hall, with 100 seats. Although it is a national theatre, only 80 % of the
budget comes from the state, the rest being covered by money obtained from
selling tickets and private funding.

4 February 2017
Romanian-born writer Dana Grigorcea

The Instinctive Feeling of Innocence is a novel written by Romanian-born writer Dana
Grigorcea. Written in German, the novel was translated into Romanian by Nora
Iuga and Radu-Mihai Alexe and was brought out by the Humanitas Publishers in
Bucharest. The novel won the 3sat Prize granted as part of the 2015 Ingeborg
Bachmann literary contest, also receiving a nomination for the Schweizer
Literaturpreis.

Dana Grigorcea made her debut as a writer of short
fiction in the 1990s, and her works were published in Romania Literara
magazine. Dana Grigorcea read German and Dutch at the University of Bucharest’s
Foreign Languages Faculty. She went on to study theatre and film directing at
Brussels University, then pursued an MA program in journalism at the Danube
University in Krems. Dana Grigorcea worked for ARTE TV station in Strasbourg and
Deutsche Welle radio broadcaster in Bonn. Since 2007, she has been living in
Zurich, where she is teaching film language at the Film Faculty of Zurich’s
University of the Arts. Dana Grigorcea was a guest in literature programs of
the Swiss DRS national radio broadcaster.

Dana Grigorcea and her husband, writer Perikles
Monioudis, organise a literary salon and run a literature blog which can be
accessed at www.neue-telegramme.ch. Dana Grigorcea made her literary debut in
German in 2011 with the novel Baba Rada. Life is Temporary and So is the
Hair on Your Head, for which she won the Literraturperle Swiss Book prize,
as well as honorary mentions awarded by the city of Zurich and thecanton of Zurich.

In the laudatory speech at the awarding ceremony of
the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, literary
critic Hildegard Keller emphasised the narrative drive of the novel The Instinctive
Feeling of Innocence, as
well as the three perspectives of the narrative, which is told by a feminine self. Keller described the text
as an excellent satire exuding an exuberant vitality. With details on that,
here is the translator of the volume into Romanian, Nora Iuga.

The translator ends
up identifying themselves with the author, since the relationship between the
translator and the author is a relationship which can be closer than the one
between mother and daughter, between sister and brother. And that, because we
speak about a bond secured by language, and there is no element more relevant
than the language, by means of which you can relate to someone. Apart from the
artistry of the style and the expressive qualities of the book, I can say the
title of the book drew my attention, because it was so profound. We need to
ponder on the significance of the title, The Instinctive Feeling of Innocence.
I have repeatedly tried to explain to myself what the relationship was between
the title and the topic of the book, between the title and the author’s look
back on all those years. For her, the most important years she spent in
Bucharest were the buildup years as a human being, but also as a woman. And we
discover, with the help of the book, the kind of place Bucharest was at the
time.

The story is set in
Bucharest in early 2000s. Victoria, fresh from Zurich, witnesses a robbery at
the bank she works for. All of a sudden she is given an unexpected holiday,
having enough time to walk together with her lover or to roam city streets, all
by herself. As she meets old acquaintances from her past, her mind is flooded
by the experiences she had as a child, by the times when she discovered the
world, together with her playmates, in the quiet Cotroceni district. It is a
novel about the Bucharest of yesterday and about the Bucharest of today, about
the final years of the communist regime and the chaotic early days of
capitalism, about the miracles of childhood and about self-search. The
Instinctive Feeling of Innocence
was received with a lot of enthusiasm by the German press. The volume is
impregnated with melancholy humour, as it depicts scenes from a childhood
spent in communist Romania. By constantly switching between narrative levels,
the book makes the transition from a communist childhood to a post-communist
reality. It talks about Michael Jackson’s concert in Bucharest, and then it
switches to a discussion about the sex life of the Ceausescu dictatorial
couple, held by a group of young people on the rooftop of the gigantic People’s
Palace. We have asked Dana Grigorcea if she has noticed any difference in how
her book was received in Romania and Germany:

My reception of the
novel depends very much on the readership. People responded to the book
differently in Germany as they did in Switzerland, for instance. There is a
fragment that I read very often, in which I describe how I was made a pioneer
in communist Romania and reactions are different every time. In the former
Democratic Republic of Germany people have other reactions than the ones in
Dusseldorf or Hamburg, for instance, while the Swiss audience also reacts
differently. There are certain jokes in my novel to which people laugh more in
Switzerland than in Austria. There are certain subtleties that Austrians grasp
faster than the Swiss. So my book heIps me know who my audience is and make an
opinion on them, depending on the place where I read my work.

With the release of the Romanian version of The
Instinctive Feeling of Innocence, readers in Bucharest, Brasov, Timisoara
and Cluj had the opportunity to take part in meetings with Dana Grigorcea, such
as book launches, autograph sessions and public readings, organised by
Humanitas Publishers. The book is due to be translated into English, Dutch and
Bulgarian.

28 January 2017
Apollo 111 – Bucharest’s new private theatre

A new private theatre opened in Bucharest at the end of November 2016. Called Apollo 111, it was initiated by actor Bogdan Dumitrache, who is best known for his leading role in the award-winning film Child’s Pose. He was joined in his efforts to found a new theatre by filmmaker Calin Peter Netzer, creative director Catalin Rusu and film producer Dragoş Vîlcu. The project for a new theatre was born at a time when the independent theatre scene has been steadily growing in Bucharest. Here is Bogdan Dumitrache, giving us details about his management strategy on this crowded market:

“My idea started from the fact that many independent spaces have appeared in recent years and that many independent productions are looking for a venue to be staged. At the end of the day, I believe all these factors have led to the emergence of a new public and have created an interest in this area. This public now has higher expectations. They can no longer settle for unsuitable venues. Hence the simple and natural idea was born that a space was needed that would be more than a bar staging theatre performances, but a more suitable venue with more than a table and some lights for a stage.”

Bogdan Dumitrache therefore looked for a venue that could also be financially sustainable. He found a big hall with a surface area of 850 metres located in the centre of Bucharest, in the Universul Palace, a building already hosting a number of independent artistic projects. The space used by the new theatre was divided into separate multi-purpose areas. The area used for theatre performances has an auditorium with 127 seats, a foyer and dressing rooms for the actors and occupies half of the entire venue. Bogdan Dumitrache explains:

“There are three main separate areas: a performance area, with all the needed equipment, and a second area divided in two hosting the cafeteria and the administrative spaces, including the offices, the rehearsal rooms and the casting studio. The office area also hosts the office of the casting agency I founded a few years ago and which I had relocated here so that I can have everything in one place be able to keep an eye on things.”

The repertoire of Apollo 111 is different from everything you find on the Romanian theatre scene at the moment. Bogdan Dumitrache tells us more about the concept behind the theatre’s evening performances:

“For a 6-week run, a new performance will be staged as often as there is a demand for it, which is also good for the production in question because it allows it to grow from one staging to the next and we can eliminate downtime, when actors may start thinking about other projects. A production develops when it is staged more frequently. It becomes a well-functioning machine. Everybody works well with everybody else, everybody knows what they are supposed to do and we become efficient. I run a theatre with four employees and I have no plans of hiring more people. I have two employees working in the technical department, one in charge of the stage and the producer. We run everything and that’s how it should be.”

Each year there is a different artistic director responsible for the season’s programme. In the first year, the artistic director is the initiator of the project himself, actor Bogdan Dumitrache, while director Radu Afrim will be the theatre’s artistic director in the 2017-2018 season. Bogdan Dumitrache once again:

“In a world where so many things happen and where staying focused on one single project means missing out on a hundred other projects, I believe topicality can be achieved through diversity. Only by tackling the areas of interest of as many creators as possible can we become topical. The artistic director who chooses the five productions staged that season must make sure that they reflect a single idea. For example, we may stage musicals the entire season and each of the five productions reflect this idea, or embrace a subject such as war and treat it historically, from the 1920s until 2016, by means of five different texts of five different historical periods, or we find a different concept and subordinate all the five productions to this idea.”

The concept proposed by Bogdan Dumitrache for the opening season at Apollo 111 is the encounter between theatre and film. The first production of the season is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul directed by filmmaker Radu Jude, the director of Aferim and Scarred Hearts. The show is an adaptation for the stage of a film script by the famous German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Work has also begun on a staging of Sergi Belbel’s After the Rain by Alex Maftei, the director of such films as Hello! How Are You? and Miss Christina. The season’s third production will be Sieranevada, based on the film of the same title by Cristi Puiu. The film was Romania’s submission to the Oscars Awards for best foreign film this year. The director who will be staging Sieranevada is yet to be established. The newly-founded Apollo 111 theatre will also have a programme for children with morning performances and a programme for young directors, set designers, chorographers and musicians under the age of 35. (Translated by E. Nasta)

21 January 2017
The Bucharest International Literature Festival

The Bucharest International Literature Festival was a roundup edition and included two public reading and debates sessions, hosted by the Romanian Peasant Museum and an event dedicated to students and staged jointly with the Department of Communication Sciences with the Bucharest’s Faculty of Letters.

At the debut evening of public readings and debates at the Peasant Club , literature lovers had the chance to meet prose writers Irina Teodorescu, Veronica D. Niculescu, Lavinia Branişte and Irina Georgescu Groza.

Translator and writer Veronica D. Niculescu tells us how she got round to writing Heading towards valleys of jade and darnel ryegrass, a novel brought out by Polirom Publishes in 2016. This is the second volume that Veronica D. Niculescu published in 2016, after Hybernalia, a sequel of Animal Symphony, with both volumes being published by the Casa de Pariuri Literare.

Veronica D. Niculescu: ”It is a volume I had been working on for about three years and I can say it all started as a game. It is a story of a girl writing a book. And that character writes a book that is different from the kind of book I would write. I chose this strategy as I have always wanted the book that I write to include the book of a character as well. Now, getting back to the topic of our meeting, I do hope the day comes when one of my books includes poems written by a male character, or by an animal character. Getting back to the story written by the girl, it is a rhyming fairy tale, which, when I completed, I didn’t even know it would be embedded in this volume. And it was only after I finished writing this fairy tale that I realized I wanted the volume to be the story of that girl. And that’s exactly how I sketched my character, starting off from the rhyming fairytale.”

After her poetry debut, she published two short fiction volumes, and a childrens book. Lavinia Braniste, who published Interior Zero for Polirom this year, told us how she came to write fiction: “Ive had a passion for short fiction for a long time now, and I still have it. At first I designed this volume as a short fiction volume as well, but the fragments came to connect to each other more than I imagined in the beginning, and I decided to keep it like that. In short, it is a story that sprang to my mind while I was having an on-line chat with a friend who is a poet, Vasile Leac, who was in Germany, picking leek and pumpkins. I was envious of his exotic experience, and I suspected he would write about it. In fact, the motto of the book comes from this conversation, it relates to a question asked by Vasile Leac: “Arent we supposed to understand life?” The way in which he phrased the question was something I liked, so I decided to write a book about how we dont understand life, because I was myself in a situation where I seemed to be fine, but I was terrified at the idea that that was what fine looks like. And I find it hard to understand if I was supposed to wish for something else or not.”

The novel The Curse of the Moustachioed Robber by Irina Teodorescu won in France the Andre Dubreuil award for a debut novel. The Romanian language edition was published by Polirom this year, translated by Madalina Vatcu: “In France the novel was received very well by the press and the critics. However, we also had reactions from the French readers, which could get lost in the multitude of Romanian names that the readers are not used to. However, these characters could exist anywhere, because it is about a place in Eastern Europe, it is not specified that the action takes place in Romania; the names of the characters are the only clues towards this.”

Irina Georgescu Groza, attending the International Literature Festival in Bucharest, gave a lecture on her debut book, published by Casa de Pariuri Literare, a short fiction book entitled Beyond the Windows. Here she is, talking about getting back to writing: “The need to write returned to me when I lived for a time in Belgium with my family. It could also have been because I didnt have friends and had lots of time, and didnt feel attracted by work. Previously I had gotten to the point where I was writing even at work, Romanian language literature, and I think my Flemish boss thought those long e-mails were part of my work for the corporation. At some point, when I got back to Romania, I decided it was time to do what I liked doing, meaning writing. I found a great creative writing course held by the Short Story Magazine, a short fiction course. I started to love fiction, even though I had written two novels, I met writers I knew, I read a lot, and started writing short fiction. I forgot about economic growth, which weighed heavily on my mind when I was working at the corporation in Belgium.”

The open readings from the books recently published by the above-mentioned writers were followed on the first evening of the International Literature Festival in Bucharest by a debate with the topic “About feminine writing: is there feminine writing or is this just an easy label for literary criticism and literary journalism?”

7 January 2017