Category: World of Culture

Two Romanian short films, “Shadow of a Cloud”, by Radu Jude, and “In the Fishtank”, by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu, were presented under the Quinzaine des Realisateurs’ and the Cinefondation sections.

Radu Jude’s “Shadow of a Cloud” tells the story of a priest, played by theater director Alexandru Dabija. The priest is called on a sweltering summer day to give the last rites to a dying woman. Jude said about the movie: “One may find many meanings in this movie. Maybe the most important is expressed in a fragment of the prayer uttered by the main character — ‘my unworthy life passed like sleep, like the shadow of a cloud’ “.

Florin Lazarescu and Radu Jude wrote the script while Marius Panduru was director of photography. Just as in his previous work, the director does not shun putting his characters in extreme situations, or even ridiculing them.

“There is something inside me pushing me to see things like this. Chekhov summarized this situation best. One character in Uncle Vanya said: ‘For a long time I believed that the destiny of man is tragic, but in the end I discovered that in fact his destiny is to be ridiculous’. And there is something funny in the way people relate to themselves and their problems, which does not rule out sadness or suffering. As far as I’m concerned this is the angle that interests me. When sadness, unhappiness and drama mix so much that you can’t identify them with the ridiculous any longer.”

Radu Jude went on to say about his existence as a filmmaker: “I wish for a cinema that is as impure as possible. I see an evolution or an involution in myself: when I started to make my first movies I had a great wish to be stylistically coherent. I wanted to have a sort of self-awareness in how I was filming. Little by little, it seems to me that this kind of coherence leads to a kind of block of energies which can open the film towards new directions, and on the other hand putting the emphasis in places where it shouldn’t be.”

He also told us why he picked theater director Alexandru Dabija to play the main character in “Shadow of a Cloud”: “That is because it seemed to me, before meeting him in person, that he has a very complex inner world, which comes out in his face, in the way he speaks. I wanted very much for the main character to have a rich inner world, to be a man asking himself questions, a man rankled by the relationship with the world and the meaning of life. I believe that all these things come through on Alexandru Dabija’s face, who is not only a great theater director, he is also a very good actor. Working with him I also discovered a human being that is equally extraordinary.”

Shadow of a Cloud had its world premiere on May 23rd at the Theatre Croisette, with the director, the producer and the actors attending.

Before getting to Cannes, the short film “In the Fistank” by Tudor Jurgiu was presented at the NexT International Short and Medium Length Film Festival in Bucharest in April. George and Cristina are trying to break up, but do not seem to be managing to do so.

This is the story of how the movie came about, as told by Tudor Jurgiu: “The story started from several other stories gathered along several years. I gathered a few stories about relationship problems. I didn’t know precisely what I wanted to do with them, but they were interesting stories and at some point, after I gathered all this material, I found some constant lines. For instance, in many of these couples, people made up, broke up, made up again and broke up again. I tried to build this story around this narrative core: a couple going through just that, but condensed in twenty minutes.”

Tudor Jurgiu says he is in favor of a relationship with actors that is free and interactive: “In the case of the film “In the Fistank”, I tried this type of approach with the actors. I wanted to have a few moments in the movie to be treated in a very realistic manner, and a few others where the actors broke out of this realistic convention and have the audience surprised by the over the top reaction. I was interested in this contrast. The tension within a couple makes people act very differently than they normally would. That is what I was interested in, this contrast that makes people break out of normality.”

18 out of the 1,550 films submitted were selected for the Cinefondation section, from 270 schools from all across the world. This year, Chile is present for the first time with a movie in this section entitled ‘Luna’, by Camila Luna Toledo. Jurgiu’s film is joined by productions from countries like Russia, the Czech Republic, Iran, the US, Belgium, Mexico, France and South Korea.

Recently, the Grand Hall of the National Theatre in Iasi hosted the 21st edition of the Romanian Theatre Union Awards Gala. This was the second time the Gala travelled away from Bucharest, after going to Sibiu in 2007, which that year was designated European Capital of Culture.

Considered the oldest and most beautiful of its kind in the country, the building currently housing the National Theatre was built between 1894 and 1896 based on plans drawn by the Viennese architects Fellner and Helmer, who built similar constructions in Vienna, Prague, Odessa and Zurich. After getting a much-needed facelift, the building was re-inaugurated in June 2012, without much change in architecture. Hanging in the middle of the hall is a chandelier with 109 light bulbs made of Vienna crystal, with 1,418 electric lights around the ceiling illuminating the Rococo paradise allegories, nymphs and cherubs painted by Alexandru Goltz. It is the beauty of this hall that convinced the chairman of the Theatre Union to host the awards gala here. His stated intention was to show support for the city’s application to become European Capital of Culture in 2021. If the city of Iasi wins the bid, the National Theatre would play an important role in the project.

Actor Constantin Chiriac, the director of the National Theatre in Sibiu and the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, talked about this ambition as he was presenting the most coveted award of the gala, the best theatre play award, to Silviu Purcarete for his Gulliver’s Travels:

“Many years ago I was going to my very first theatre play here, at the Iasi National Theatre, as a student at the Costache Negruzzi High School. Today I come to salute Iasi for its application for European Capital of Culture in the name of Sibiu, which enjoyed this title in 2007. I wish you a lot of success. Gulliver’s Travels was staged at the Edinburgh festival thanks to the great success enjoyed there by Purcarete’s Faust in 2009. Last year, Silviu Purcarete received in Edinburgh what is likely the most important award in Europe, the Herald Angel. Thanks to the success which confirms today’s award, the National Theatre in Sibiu will be present at the Edinburgh festival with a show of its own choosing, which is a first in the history of the festival. At the same time, we are invited next year to the Avignon Theatre Festival in the official section. We are proud to work with such outstanding directors.”

The play Two Lottery Tickets, staged by Alexandru Dabija at the National Theatre in Bucharest won two awards: for best director and for best stage design. The play Hedda Gabler, staged by Andrei Serban at the Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj Napoca, reaped three awards: best leading actress, best supporting actress, and best actor.

While Radu Afrim did not win the best director award, where he was nominated for his staging of The Ordeal at the Bucharest National Theatre, one of his actresses, Silvia Török did receive an award: the best stage debut award for her role in Afrim’s Girl in the Goldfish Bowl staged at the German State Theatre in Timisoara. Silvia Török told us about her character, Iris:

“Iris is an 11 year-old girl who is very special. The character developed as we worked on the play. This is a very dear character to me thanks to Radu Afrim, who helped me give it shape and gain a certain concept about this little girl, who I now play lovingly. I think I was lucky. In my opinion, the entire play deserved an award. I got very emotional, because I was there with the colleagues in my theatre school class, my sister, and Radu Afrim, who stood by me. It was very emotional to stand on that stage and represent this entirety, which was very rich and very difficult.”

Another very important award of the evening was for best leading actor, won by George Costin for this role as the major in the play ‘The Tot Family’, staged by director Victor Ioan Frunza at the Nicolae Balcescu Cultural Centre in Bucharest.

The highlight of the evening was the Lifetime Achievement Award. In the female category the award was granted to Leni Pinţea Homeag, for her 45 year-long career at the Craiova National Theatre. Here is her reaction:

“For me, every award I got along my career was a joy, but also motivation for what was ahead of me. I always felt obliged to do more, and do better. However, I think that the most valuable awards are those won when you gain recognition after five, ten, fifteen years. I love this award. I am honoured by this distinction. I dedicate this award to the directors who trusted me, offering me so many challenging roles. I remember Silviu Purcarete, because it was my longest period of collaboration with someone, with five grand plays and ten years of international tours. I dedicate this award to theatre, which has been with me when no one else was.”

The National Theatre Bucharest also received an excellence award for its exceptional 2012 programme dedicated to the playwright I.L. Caragiale.

Mihaela Ursa is the author of “The 1980s in Literature and the Promises of Postmodernism” (published by Paralela 45 in 1999) “Gheorghe Craciun — a Monograph” (brought out by Aula Publishers in 2000) and “Writing-topia” (released by Dacia Publishers in 2005). The books were awarded prizes by the Writers’ Union in Romania and Romania’s General and Compared Literature Association. “In Eroticon, I attempted to reconnect literature to its most fundamental meaning, according to which literature is a means of reinventing the world, of providing sheer delight, and in doing so I left structural, aesthetic or axiological commentaries in the background”, says literary critic Mihaela Ursa. The critic Alex Goldis emphasized that the volume was all the more surprising since almost nothing prepared us for a hedonistic essay on Western erotic fiction.

Speaking now is Mihaela Ursa: “I was happy to give up the literary theorist’s lofty aesthetic stance, in order to discover the equally interesting and relevant mechanisms of reading as identification, the mechanisms of reading for pleasure, of a reading pattern that I termed the pattern of retrieving literature as life, of reading as a form of experiencing literature.”

One doesn’t read erotic fiction as such, but rather watches it unfold: this is the tenet from which Mihaela Ursa’s “Eroticon” starts. From the Ancient Greek novel to Anais Nin, Marquez, Nabokov, Bruckner or Beigbeder, things have not changed as much as we might think they have. To use the title of the book, the “Eroticon” entrusts literature, according to the author, with one of the powers specific to visual arts—that of conveying a whole story through one image alone—a nuclear scene, which is actually the core unit of classical erotic fiction. As Mihaela Ursa puts it, “My main concern is the extent to which erotic literature is significantly more at a risk of being read non-fictionally than other forms of literature. Erotic literature is taken as an existential model. We simply cannot cease to allow someone else to teach us how to be loved, and we believe the least credible of the teachers: literary characters.” Is that a big risk, we asked her?

Mihaela Ursa: “I think there is a huge amount of risk, and I noticed that when teaching my courses. Because, although in each of my lectures I make sure I specify that it is literature and not life that makes the topic of our discussion, many of the students I have been working with on those texts and who in turn are exemplary readers, cannot help experiencing that kind of slip, cannot help falling into that trap of viewing erotic literature contexts as some sort of model contexts, as models that they may follow in their everyday life.”

Mihaela Ursa confesses that, in the second part of the book, she let herself persuaded by the utopic ambition of capturing the impossible, of defining erotic fiction. And it is the author herself who offers a possible definition: “erotic fiction always provides an erotology, a pseudo-explanation, a pseudo-theory or ideology of love, an identification code of true love, or of the nature of love.”





Nora Iuga is viewed as one of the most notable prose writers in Romanian literature. She made her début in the 1960s, getting more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction or diary published. For her literary achievements, Nora Iuga has been awarded the most notable literary distinctions in Romania. Her books have been translated and published in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Bulgaria and Slovenia. In 2007 Nora Iuga was the recipient of the Friedrich Gundolf Prize, awarded by the Deutsche Akademie fur Sprache und Dichtung, a distinction that usually goes to those who contribute to the dissemination of German culture around the world. Nora Iuga translated lots of books, by August Strindberg, ETA Hoffman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Knut Hamsun, Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Muller, Ernst Junger, Oskar Pastior, Gunter Grass, Aglaja Veteranyi, Rolf Bossert.

“The Sky Market. A Kitchen Diary” was first published in 1986. It is Nora Iuga’s most audacious books, and quite surprisingly, one of her least known volumes. Claudiu Kormartin wrote the foreword of the volume, which was brought out by the Max Blecher Publishers. He emphasized that “when it was first released, the book did not get the attention it deserved. We could say the literary formula the author resorted to was a bit too exotic.” Actually, the initial title of the volume “A Kitchen Diary” was thought provoking enough for the censorship to rule it out.

Speaking now is Nora Iuga: “It is the book from which censorship took out the biggest number of pages, and there is something special about this revised version, which might be of interest to everybody. I lent the original version of the book to the poet Mariana Marin, who was a very good friend of mine. Of course, books were brought out in the formula the censorship wanted, with our words replaced or deleted, but when we gave our writings to our friends, they read them in the original version. The book had been going through such a process the first time it was published, but my editor, Claudiu Komartin, found a very interesting formula. He placed the word I had originally chosen above the word the censors opted for. So here we are, many years later, with the book being reprinted with the words of the censors deleted and replaced with the initial ones.”

“Several worlds meet in the modest perimeter of the kitchen, where the poet’s existence unfolds as a pattern of overlapping experiences. Staunchly prosaic and sharply cruel, Nora Iuga’s poetry displays, at the same time, a rare audacity of the inspiration,” literary critic Valeriu Cristea wrote when the volume was first published.

Speaking again is Nora Iuga: “The book is special in various respects. It is the first book where I applied a principle of writing, actually of a kind of writing which is different from what had been in fashion in Romanian literature before, namely that of the total book where the writer, going from one state to the other, adapts his voice as well. Under these circumstances, chances are that literary genres change as well…In the prose fragments I often depict episodes taking place in the kitchen, but when states become more lyrical, the voice of poetry is heard.”

We end with an excerpt from “The Sky Market. A Kitchen Diary”: “Will I ever have the time to declare everything before that tribunal which looks at me with suspicion? Will I ever have the courage to go over my own censorship and say everything that ought not to be heard? Do I have the right to speak my mind, when offered the chance to keep silent? Members of the jury, we do not speak the same language. Have you ever lived the heroism, the madness, the risks of freedom?”

Traditionally, “pasca” has a cheese filling, being similar for that fact to cheesecake. For the dough, mix half a kilo or a pound of flour with three egg yolks, a melted cube of butter, 100 grams of sugar, a cup of warm milk, a couple of drops of rum essence and vanilla extract, yeast and a pinch of salt. Leave to rise for about an hour. Take a deep round oven tray, spread the dough in a thick sheet, and line the walls and bottom of the tray with it.

Separately, mix half a kilo of cottage cheese with 200 grams of sugar, a cube of butter, one cup of sour cream, 100 grams of raisins, a pinch of grated lemon rind, a little semolina, three egg yolks and one little bag of vanilla sugar. Mix the egg yolks with the sugar and the grated lemon rind, then mix into the cottage cheese, the raisins and the vanilla sugar, and knead into a smooth mix. If the filling turns out too runny, use more semolina to absorb the moisture.

Pour the mixture into the tray lined with the dough, and you can use leftover dough to make strips and decorate, usually making a cross of dough on top. Set into the oven for about an hour, or until golden brown on top.

This is a ubiquitous dessert at the Easter table, once Eastern Lent is broken and eating cheese and eggs is once again allowed by the faithful. For most Romanians it is the smell and taste of Easter. Enjoy!

In mid April a festival called “E-motional Bodies and Cities” celebrated “the artistic process and experiment with a view to making visible the invisible”, namely the making of a contemporary dance show or of any performance. This is how Stefania Ferchedau the artistic manager and co-organizer of the festival “E-motional: Bodies and Cities in Motion” would describe the event. The festival was held in Bucharest to mark the end of the European project E-Motional Bodies & Cities, initiated and organized by the Gabriela Tudor Foundation between 2011 and 2013.

Financed under the 2007-2013 Culture Programme of the European Union and by the European Cultural Foundation of Amsterdam, the project also involved several cultural associations in Europe. Choreographer and cultural manager Cosmin Manolescu spoke about the goals of E-Motional Bodies and Cities, a project that started out in May 2011:

Cosmin Manolescu: “We wanted a project that should foster the mobility of various dance companies in different contexts. We approached companies in Cyprus, Latvia, Ireland, Turkey and the UK, which Romania hadn’t been in contact with before. We tried to invest in artists and in managers. So we gave them a chance of attending various events, festivals or apply for a professional development scholarship over a period of two or three weeks. The scholarships are granted by the Gabriela Tudor Foundation in one of the countries taking part in the project. We organized two cultural management workshops, one in Riga, one in Limassol, by means of which we tried to make participants familiar with strategies that would help them better manage their projects and time”.

In figures, E-Motional Bodies & Cities translated as 6 participating countries, 9 cities, 18 choreographic residences, 27 mobility scholarships, 13 Gabriela Tudor grants, 5 artistic research residences in Dublin, Riga, Limassol, London and Bucharest, 15 performances staged in four countries, 2 cultural management workshops and the E-Motional Festival. More about the direct and indirect beneficiaries of this project from Cosmin Manolescu:

Cosmin Manolescu: “The festival directly supported over 150 artists and dance managers in all its six categories. We had over 1,000 viewers for the performances in Dublin, Riga and Limassol. So overall, I believe the project has reached over two thousand people in the past two years”.

One of the direct beneficiaries of the project was Bogdana Pascal, associate video artist, who took it upon herself to document the working meetings of the two groups of artists in research residences.

Bogdana Pascal: “My contribution to this project was two-fold. On the one hand I was the project’s associate video artist. I had to film certain parts of their artistic process to the extent to which what they did could also serve my own project. I had a research topic of my own, which focused on the fact that I’ve stopped feeling like a tourist whenever I travel to another country. I undergo a certain interior transformation, I am neither a tourist, nor a local, I am somewhere in between.”

The project came to a close with a Festival called “E-motional: bodies and cities in motion”. Among others, the agenda included fragments from the work of the two teams involved in the artistic research process. The members of one group, called Layers, met in Riga, London and Bucharest. Alexis Vassiliou of Cyprus, a professional musician, who in recent years has taken an interest in choreography and performance in contemporary dance, was one of the members of Layers. For him, E-Motional Bodies and Cities was perhaps the most important contemporary dance project he took part in.

Here are the concluding remarks of choreographer and cultural manager Cosmin Manolescu which wrapped up E-Motional Bodies & Cities:

Cosmin Manolescu: “The moment we kicked off the project, we didn’t know exactly what we were letting ourselves in for. This interface with various countries and organizations involved is pretty hard to manage. The important thing is that we’ve developed ties between artists and organizations and the project now breeds projects of its own. At the same time I am happy to announce the project will continue over the next two years. It will have a different format, but will continue to focus on emotion and movement. We’ve obtained a new grant from the EU, allowing us to carry out the project until 2015”.

Located in University Square in downtown Bucharest, the “I.L. Caragiale” National Theatre is a landmark in the capital cultural life, but also a major tourist attraction. Of late however, the building has undergone several changes. The fresh outlook of University Square will surprise anyone who hasn’t visited Bucharest in the last couple of years. Theatregoers are also in for several surprises with respect to changes in the access to and design of theatre halls.

In 2010 the over-debated and controversial renovation works kicked off. In the 2012-2013 season, the Amfiteatru, 99 and Atelier halls were disused, while shows continued to be performed only in the Grand Hall and in the recently opened Small and Media Halls. Director of the National Theatre Ion Caramitru has recently held a press conference in order to give an update on the latest architectural and artistic developments at the institution he runs.

“Whereas in the first two years, from March 2010 to this day, the main objective of the building team was to remove the old façade, reinforce several hundreds of props in the foundation, pour cement slab flooring, this year construction works will move to more delicate activities, such as finishing consolidation works for the most elegant hall, one we have chosen to call the Painting Hall for the time being, which will be opened right after Easter. The construction team also plans to add the last touches to the Studio Hall, the former performance hall of the National Operetta Theatre, which will go into use starting September. By then we need to move all the shows from the Grand hall to Studio Hall”.

The most popular and audience-friendly hall, the Grand Hall, is scheduled to undergo serious changes. Ion Caramitru again:

“The Grand Hall will seat 909 people and will remain a classical theatre hall. The famous wooden framing dating back to the Ceausescu regime will be removed, while the official box will remain the same, although it will be flanked by baignoires on its left and right. There will be fewer seats for the audience on the ground floor, because Ceausescu tried to expand the width of the hall in order to broaden its surface, yet sacrificing several anti-seismic supporting diaphragms. Therefore, there will be baignoires on the sides, which will add to the intimacy of the hall. People will feel more like in a theatre hall instead of a conference hall”.

The new venues that are due to open this year, the Painting Hall and Studio Hall can be arranged depending on requirements of the performance. The seating can be designed observing Elizabethan, arena or Italian patterns. The Media Hall is already functional. It is not designed as a performance hall per se, but it is rather aimed at hosting various events — conferences, temporary exhibitions, high-profile meetings. It may still be used to host performances. Anyone curious to find out more about the new design of performance halls can access the website of the National Theatre, www.tnb.ro, where they can take a virtual tour of the new performance venues.

The Bucharest National Theatre devoted 2012 to Romanian playwright I. L. Caragiale. The celebration was marked through a series of special events, while the main goal was to stage only plays by Caragiale. A number of directors put on plays that year, including Silviu Purcarete, Alexandru Dabija, Radu Afrim, Horatiu Malaele and stage choreographer Gigi Caciuleanu. It was a highly successful project. For having organized the Caragiale Year, Ion Caramitru, as general director of the Bucharest National Theatre, has been granted this year the Theatre Award at the Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala. For the same project, the Bucharest National Theatre has been awarded the Excellence Prize by the Theatre Union in Romania. The dance theatre show entitled “D’ale noastre”, directed by Gigi Caciuleanu to mark the Caragiale Year is among the projects of the Bucharest National Theatre in 2013. The institution’s deputy director, actress Ilinca Tomoroveanu, tells us more about those projects:

“Rehearsals on The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol, directed by Felix Alexa are under way at the theatre’s Big Hall. Neil Simon’s Rumors will also be premiered this autumn. The Media Hall venues rehearsals for Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love directed by Claudiu Goga, while the Painting Hall hosts director Mircea Cornisteanu rehearsing the Little Inferno by Mircea Stefanescu, featuring exceptional actors such as Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez. The play The Man Who Saw Death, by Victor Eftimiu, directed by Dan Tudor will also have its opening this autumn but right now the artists are still working on it in the Small Hall. There is another production that we hope will be a hit with the audience. It’s Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, directed by Andryi Zholdak at the Painting Hall or at the Studio Hall. “D’ale noastre”, the dance show I have previously mentioned, directed by Gigi Caciuleanu, will go on a tour to Sofia, Bulgaria. After having enjoyed great success in Brussels, Paris and London, we try to organize an international tour with this show.”

There is another project of the Bucharest National Theatre that continues in 2013 as well. The Theatre’s general director, Ion Caramitru, tells us more about it:

Ion Caramitru: “Open Doors for All, is a project we set up for the actors who don’t get the chance to perform that often or who want to experiment. Hall 99, which still undergoes repair works, will be all theirs. As many as 6 projects have been submitted, of which we have picked an independent theatre project, experimental theatre in fact, on texts written by Peca Stefan. When Hall 99 is completely refurbished, a rehearsal room, a storage room for set design items and costumes and of course, a technical team will be entirely devoted to that experiment. Its initiators will have four weeks to rehearse and seven consecutive evenings to present their show to the public. Access is free of charge.”

The Bucharest National Theatre will host several other interesting events. On April 7th, the Sofia-Based Ivan Vazov National Theatre will perform “Don Juan” by Moliere . Between May 30th and June 2nd, the Millesime Association for Wine Culture and Civilization is staging, in the theatre’s foyer, the first edition of the Days of Wine Culture and Civilization and the first edition of the Romanian Wine Gala. Also, from September 25th until November, the Media foyers will host painter Emil Ciocoiu’s exhibition.

Another great news for theatre lovers is that as from this month tickets to the shows of the Bucharest National Theatre are available online.

”I think it was a genuine success. Everything has been extremely lively. The events have been very diverse, and contrasting opinions have been voiced”, Jean-Francois Colosimo, the President of the Centre National du Livre, the National Book Center, said at the end of the event. Romanian prose writer Radu Aldulescu voiced hope that in the wake of Romania’s participation in the Book Fair, Romanian literature would be better known in the West. In turn, writer Marta Petreu shared the opinion that fostering Romanian literature in the world’s most widely spoken languages must continue in the future as well.

Over 50 authors took part in the events staged at the Paris Book Fair, representing all literary genres, from poetry and drama, to comics, essays and fiction. Enjoying a spectacular design and stretching along a surface area of 400 square meters, Romania’s pavilion had a bookshop and a debate area. The French retail chain FNAC, the official partner of the Book Fair, made more than 1,000 Romanian books available to the reading public, and more than 600 volumes by Romanian authors whose works have been translated into French. More than 60 events and debates were held, most of which hosted by Romania’s pavilion and the National Book Center’s stand.

However, Romania’s presence at the most important event on the French book market was somehow marred by the refusal of four leading writers to take part in the event, in token of protest against the new policies of the Romanian Cultural Institute’s board. These were Mircea Cartarescu, Andrei Plesu, Neagu Djuvara and Gabriel Liiceanu. Taking up on those writers’ decision, French Ambassador to Romania Phillippe Gustin said that the participation invitation was extended on behalf of France, and that “the absentees are always wrong”.

Speaking now is playwright Matei Visniec, who attended the Book Fair this year: “I believe we’ll see a lot of debate on this issue, I mean leading writers not taking part in the event, given that the Romanian Cultural Institute changed its board, changes some of its policies and operated massive budget cuts in the field of culture. The ideal case would be for the writers coming to the Book Fair to showcase an extremely diverse literary creativity, rather than start making politics. In the end, we are talking about a great cultural event”.

Andrei Oisteanu, whose volume, the “Image of the Jew in Romanian Culture” was published in French early this month, also referred to Romania being guest of honor: “We must say the idea of inviting a country as guest of honor is related neither to protocol nor is it a strategic move, as it’s not a decision made by the government or the ministry of culture. And neither is that a coincidence. The invitation has been made on behalf of the Union of Editors in France, an extremely strong trade union, which is aware when a literature in the wider sense of the word, a written culture, becomes active and when there is a new interesting wave coming out.”

Here are other impressions from the Paris Book Fair. Poet Ion Muresan: “Romania is a very inventive country so its pavilion can’t be but appealing to visitors, particularly thanks to a wider selection of works. I noticed everyone is curious to find out what volumes we have on display there. For the time being visitors are only Romanian nationals but we hope that foreigners will be soon visiting us as well.”

Here is poet and translator Dinu Flamand: “The first impression is of course visual. I recently came close to L’ecume des Pages, one of the most famous bookstores in France, and for the first time I saw two shelves filled with Romanian books, something I have never seen in the 26 years of my stay in Paris. A great deal of Romanian books has been finally translated into French. I remember the mixed feeling I had at the other editions of the fair, which had on view a good deal of books by Japanese or Portuguese writers; it was a mixed feeling of admiration and envy. I have never imagined that the day will soon come for Romania to be invited to the Paris Book Fair.”

According to Dinu Flamand, in terms of book sales the Romanian participation has exceeded even the expectations of the French organizers. The writer has also been impressed by the standing ovations rewarding the participants in round table discussions during the fair. Furthermore, cultural magazines in France have devoted numerous articles to writers from Romania.

“The Phantom at the Mill”, published in 2008, is a comprehensive novel dwelling on Romanian communism; it scooped the Romanian Writers’ Union’s Prize for Fiction, while her 2009 best-seller “Lizoanca, when She Was Eleven” received the Romanian Academy’s “Ion Creanga“ Award. “Lizoanca…” was translated by the Horlemann Verlag Publishers in Berlin. The latter boasts the publication into German of Mo Yan’s works. We recall that Mo Yan is the foremost contemporary Chinese writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.

Between March 14th and the 17th 2013, Doina Rusti was invited to the Leipzig International Book Fair, where she gave a series of readings and had a number of meetings with her readers.

Doina Rusti: ” Such events do not occur very often in my life. A debate took place at Café Europa — a place at the Fair which usually venues debates with writers coming from central and eastern Europe, where I met Jan Cornelius, who is also the translator of my novel into German. I was lucky; he is a radio producer, a writer with a good rating and a polyglot translator. Then let me also mention an important reading I gave at Fact Theater; people go there and buy tickets to listen to a writer. Such reading sessions occur in the evening with those attending underlining each sentence or butting in to ask questions. In addition, Romania had a stand, which was organized by the Ministry of Culture where autograph signing sessions were held, as well as talks with the German readers or with Romanians living abroad. “

Concurrently, Doina Rusti took part in other events, such as a literary dialogue, the Deutsch Rumaenisches Forum organized in Berlin jointly with the Romanian Embassy. Apart from Doina Rusti, taking part in the Leipzig Book Fair were other Romanian writers such as Gabriela Adamesteanu, Daniel Banulescu or Radu Vancu. The novel’ Lizoanca” will soon be brought out by the Rediviva Publshers in Milan, Italy, and by the Ediciones Traspies, in Granada, Spain. With details on the novel “Lizoanca” here is the author herself.

Doina Rusti: ” Lizoanca” deals with a time span of four decades where in a small community all sorts of compromises occur, eventually leading up to disasters, and gaining their momentum as a little girl is accused of infesting the whole village with syphilis, eventually succeeding in coping with the atrocities the grown ups had been cooking up for her. I started off from a real case, which at that time enjoyed a wide media coverage, but I did not use the real facts; I fictionalized the story. What makes the core of the novel – and I believe that was precisely why the Romanian Academy awarded the novel — is the fact that people forgot their traditions, forgot the significance of a Christian monogram and that’s where everything starts from. I’m speaking about a monogram discovered by Vasile Parvan and dated 230 AD: “Sic tibi terra levis” (May the earth rest lightly on you). The real topic of the novel is the fact that people forgot their traditions.”

Born on February 18, 1959 in Comosteni, a village in southern Romania, Doina Rusti made he debut in 1997. Among her books, worth mentioning are “The Red Little Man”, a novel about the power of loneliness in today’s world and “Zogru”, a fantastic story about a character crossing various historical ages, like a spirit embodying human experiences and aspirations. Also, Doina Rusti has been publishing short fiction, some of her short stories being included in contemporary fiction anthologies and collections.

A specialist in symbology (she is a professor), Doina Rusti has also written a series of non-fiction books, among which “Dimitrie Cantemir’s Bestiary”, “Cultural Print Media”, “The Encyclopedia of Humanistic Culture”, “A Dictionary of Symbols of Mircea Eliade’s Works”.

Young literary critic Paul Cernat wrote that Doina Rusti is, QUOTE, a strong and original prose writer, a rara avis in Romanian Literature after December 1989., UNQUOTE, while writer Nicolaa Breban praises Doina Rusti as a, QUOTE, first –class fiction writer in present-day Romanian literature. UNQUOTE.

This week, Romanian movie theaters have premiered the most awaited movie of the year, ‘Child’s Pose’, the winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. The film, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, has gained a life of its own, being among the most sought after acquisitions the world over. Sales are managed by Beta Cinema from Germany, and is being distributed not just all over Europe, but also in Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan, before going to the US and to the UK. This is Netzer’s third feature film after his much appreciated and multiple award winners Maria (2003) and Medal of Honor (2010). The film speaks in dramatic, emotional, but also humorous terms of the traumas felt by children suffocated by a parent’s love and the imprints left on a child’s personality by parents. At the same time, the film is an X-ray of today’s high society and about influence peddling and corruption in today’s Romanian society. The script was written by Razvan Radulescu and by film director, Calin Peter Netzer.

Speaking at the Bucharest premiere, lead actress Luminita Gheorghiu said that emotions ran much higher when facing the domestic audience. ‘This is the first contact we have with the audience here, people you meet in the street. This is where we live, where we work. Every time I have a premiere at home I get very nervous. I meet people in the street, and I would like to look at them in the eyes and have them say ‘It’s great you did this movie!’ ‘. Here she is herself talking about the movie:

“I think Romanian filmmakers are at the moment of their confession. I remember the point at which I got tired of Italian Neo-realism, of the dire poverty depicted in their movies. I think Romanian filmmakers are at that point. As Cristi Puiu said, we should not be putting makeup on reality. And this is reality. Of course there are happy things going on in Romania nowadays, but I don’t understand why Romanian directors are blamed for making movies out of everyday life stories. Getting back to ‘Child’s Pose’, I admit I’ve been selfish. I realized that I was looking at a very good script, that I was offered a part with negative aspects, that it was a big role. It was such a good script that I understood it from the first reading, and it offered me a lot of data about my character. I am very happy I was given such an opportunity.”

Bodgan Dumitrache plays the role of a son who tries to break away from a possessive mother.

“First I have to understand what is going on and the things that my character has to deal with. I cannot reconstruct the character’s emotional range otherwise. Every single time, I try to reconstruct the context and take it deeper, so I can understand what is happening. Every time I work with a new director, his work style influences me, motivates me and takes me in certain directions. Getting back to ‘Child’s Pose’, I think this love-hate relationship between mother and son goes on. What I personally loved about Calin’s film is that in a story spanning three days you can feel the 30 years of relationship. And you understand where the conflicts between them stem from. It’s true that we make a snapshot of an extreme moment, where relations are extreme, where terrible things are said, but these are things that have stacked up over time.”

Luminita Gheorghiu and Bodgan Dumitrache, playing the mother and the son, are joined by a choice range of supporting actors. Supporting actress Natasa Raab was asked if Western audiences could get a negative image of Romania out of this movie:

“I don’t think that what happens in the movie sketches a negative image, this could have been anywhere in the world. The story is not specifically Romanian, accidents will happen anywhere. I think it’s a slice of life, a universal story, and I think the way in which it was told in the film was what won us the award at the Berlinale. In addition, compared to other Romanian movies, this one also shows us the life of the nouveau riche after the Revolution, it is not in the minimalist genre that we all got used to. This, I think, is the great merit of this movie, that anyone, from any part of the world, can understand it.”

Director Calin Netzer also spoke about the movie, saying, quote: “My intention was for this psycho-drama to be appealing to the audience, because the situations and characters are such that many can identify with them, even though it is a tougher movie, harder to digest, with a lot of tension. I don’t think we make the audience suffer. I think that it was somehow psychologically rewarding. It’s not a short term effect movie, a feel good movie, it is a movie with medium and long term effects. I don’t think it will change people’s lives, but it raises questions, and it may be therapeutic, unquote.”

Recently, actor Ion Caramitru, the president of UNITER, the National Theater Union in Romania, has announced his intention to organize the 2013 edition of the UNITER Awards Gala in Iasi, in the Big Hall of the National Theater. This is the 2ndtime when the Gala is not held in Bucharest, the 2007 UNITER Awards Gala being organized in Sibiu, which, that year, was designated the European Capital of Culture. For the Vasile Alecsandri National Theater in Iasi, this event strikes a balance between normality and abnormality, as Cristian Hadji-Culea, the artistic director of the theater, has told us:

“The National Theater in Iasi is the first national theater in Romania. Here you can find the roots of Romanian theater, not only of institutionalized theater, but of theater in general. It was here that the first play in Romanian was staged, by Gheorghe Asachi. So, from this point of view we are speaking of normality. What is not normal is that, in such a centralized country like Romania, this Gala is always taking place in Bucharest. Probably this Gala will be organized in Iasi because King Carol I named our city the capital of Romanian culture after it lost its status of capital of Moldavia.”

Until the 1850s, Iasi had been the center of the drama movement in the French language in the Romanian Principalities. At the time, more precisely in 1816, Romanian scholar Gheorghe Asachi staged the first play in the Romanian language entitled “Mirtil and Hloe” , an adaptation after Gessner and Florian.

Considered the oldest and most beautiful theater building in Romania, the building that is now hosting the National Theater in Iasi was erected between 1894 and 1896 after the blueprints of famous Viennese architects Fellner and Helmer, who designed similar buildings in Vienna, Prague, Odessa and Zurich. Inaugurated at the same time with the theater building, the powerhouse of the theater marked the beginning of electric lighting in Iasi. The Big Hall of the National Theater in Iasi was re-inaugurated in June 2012 after being refurbished according to the original architectural plans. Hanging in the middle of the big hall is a Venetian crystal chandelier with 109 bulbs while 1,418 electric lamps shed their light on paradisiacal allegories, nymphs and angels framed by Rococo structures on the ceiling painted by Al. Goltz.

The beauty of the hall was one of the elements that made the president of UNITER decide to organize the UNITER Gala in Iasi. Actor Ion Caramitru said that the event would support the candidacy of the city of Iasi to the title of European Capital of Culture in 2021. If Iasi wins the title, the National Theater in Iasi would have a central role in the respective project. Cristian Hadji-Culea:

“At present the National Theater in Iasi has 4 halls, therefore almost all types of shows can be staged here because we have almost all types of performance spaces. Aside from the hall with an Italian stage, which is the Big Hall, there is also a hall we call the Cube, which we built when the Big Hall was being refurbished. The room has 150 seats and is very tempting for the directors who worked or would like to work here. We also have an adjacent historical building, the first powerhouse of the city of Iasi, where musician George Enescu played and writer Mihail Sadoveanu lived. It is called the Theater Factory hall, it can seat more than 100 people and we intend to make it available to the young artists. There is also the Studio Hall seating 100 people. For the Theater Factory we have inaugurated this year a theater direction debut contest, which we hope to be successful. We hope to have more winners because our interest here, at the National Theater in Iasi, is to be able to discover new theater forms for a new public.”

The Vasile Alecsandri National Theatre in Iasi has in time held many festivals that can be included in the campaign to promote the city as a European Capital of Culture. The theatre’s director Cristian Hadji Culea:

“One of these festivals is closely linked to one of the buildings belonging to the theatre. Opposite to where we are today, there used to be a hall which is the birth place of the first Jewish theatre in the world. Avram Goldfaden founded a theatre that for the first time held its performances in Yiddish, a theatre he then went on to recreate in New York. To continue this tradition, we have a festival which we initiated about 15 years ago which speaks about the exchange of influences between the Jewish community and other European cultures. The festival was first held during the time of my predecessor Ion Holban and took place on a regular basis. Recently, however, it has been difficult to find the funding. Another festival hosted by the theatre is entitled ‘To the Very East of Europe’, which again deals with the interaction between the East and the West of Europe. We have invited all theatre companies from the Republic of Moldova to participate in this festival, thus restoring in a way the unity of a geographical space that has been divided by borders for a long time. Our intention at the moment is to create a new festival entitled ‘Encounters’, an event dedicated to creativity in theatre and the language of theatre.”

While it remains to be seen whether Iasi wins its bid to become the European Capital of Culture, one thing is certain: the National Theatre Union Gala will be held at the city’s National Theatre on the 13th of May this year. As for the highlights of the theatre’s current season, the internationally famous Romanian director Silviu Purcarete recently staged Eugen Labiche’s comedy “The Italian Straw Hat”, while the equally celebrated director Mihai Maniutiu will start a new collaboration project with the theatre.

Though it was opened for the public as late as September 2009, the Ocnele Mari salt mine in Valcea County, Southern Romania, has already become one of the most important and most visited such places in this country. Stretching across 25 thousand square meters, the salt mine has playgrounds for children, souvenir shops, a cinema hall, a mini basketball ground and a carting track; and, most importantly, the Ocnele Mari salt mine is home to the biggest underground church in Romania, as well as to a salt museum. Rodica Tanasie, the head of the Ocnele Mari Tourist Office, tells us more about the church:

“ The history of this church started when the mine became a tourist attraction in September 2009. The church is the biggest underground Christian Orthodox church. Its patron saints are George and Varvara, the latter being known as the protector of miners, architects and constructors. The church was fitted and equipped by the Ramnicu Valcea Mine and the parish priest. Since 2009, many events have been organized here. For instance, in 2011 the holy relics of Saint Varvara were brought here from Greece. A two day pilgrimage was also held on the occasion. We have organized several religious music concerts as well, one of them given by the well-known clarinet player Felix Goldbach and the St. Antim Ivireanu Choir of the Archbishopric Cathedral.

Because of the excellent state of the mine galleries and equipment, which have been preserved ever since the mine was closed, the Turda salt mine has turned into a genuine museum. So, today the place is an attraction for many of those who visit Turda, in Cluj County, central Romania. Salt drilling in the Turda mine, opened in the 17thcentury, meant a lot for the town’s development. When the mine became a tourist attraction, visitors were surprised to see there a treatment facility, sports grounds and an amphitheatre. And, ever since, many events have been held there. Felicia Raceanu, the director of the Turda House of Culture tells us about the events that are going to take place from now on:

“ The agenda of events is quite full this year. The Turda House of Culture organizes these events in conjunction with the salt mine and with other institutions, for the activities held there to be as attractive as possible to tourists. During the Turda Cultural Spring, which starts in March, we will have an Arts Day, held in the mine. Also, there will be a music show with children and youth bands from the town. For Easter we will stage a special exhibition. This summer there will be two camps, one organized by the House of Culture in partnership with the Turda Filarmonia Cultural Society, and another one in partnership with the Tudor Jarda People’s Arts School in Cluj. We are also happy that the Culture without Borders Society has announced its participation in our programs. Last year, the artists who exhibited in the salt mine enjoyed a big success.”

Last year, the Turda Salt Mine played host to an unusual show, given by Silence Teatro from Italy, at the 5thInternational Experimental Film Festival MAN.in.FEST, organized by the Imposibil Theatre Association. The 2012 edition brought together well-known artists from 6 countries, and the event was unusual for the very use of unconventional venues, such as the Turda salt mine.

In October 2009 the city of Cluj-Napoca saw the establishment of a very special place devoted to contemporary art, both visual and performing arts: the Paintbrush Factory. Set up as a federation too, the Paintbrush Factory is the first large-scale collective project in the Romanian cultural milieu and has already compelled nation-wide recognition. In the 2009-2011 period the Paintbrush Factory played host to over 40 shows, 50 art exhibitions, 30 workshops and 10 festivals.

We talked to Miki Braniste, the head of the ColectivA Association, a spin-off from the Paintbrush Factory: “It is a joint initiative, which virtually concentrates the efforts of the culture-oriented civil society in Cluj. Upon any visit to the Paintbrush Factory you can meet both curators and sculptors, artists who take an interest in films, installations, performance art or just painters. On the other hand, you will also see NGOs staging dance or theatre shows or organizing concerts. We make up a heterogeneous group of people bound together by a common desire at one point in their lives, which is precisely what has made us stick together. Most cultural operators who are residents of the Paintbrush Factory had been looking for a place to exhibit their works since 2009. The fact that rents have dropped significantly also enabled us to pool our resources and rent out a large building of 3.000 square meters”.

The Paintbrush Factory spells out 40 contemporary artists, 5 contemporary art galleries, 10 cultural organizations and 2 performance halls. The art gallery was named after the original purpose of the building, which can be easily guessed the moment you step inside.

Cultural manager Miki Braniste has more: “We tried to preserve as much of the original identity of the location as possible. When we came here we found various types of paintbrushes that were manufactured there depicted on panels, and a great deal of labour protection posters. We kept the whole lot. We also staged an exhibition of all the items we found on the ground. We want to pay heed to those who had worked there before”.

In times of crisis funds for cultural activities are hard to find, even more so for the freelance sector. The financial strategies employed at the Paintbrush Factory set an excellent example of unity and solidarity.

Miki Braniste explains: “Here, at the Paintbrush Factory we all live on our own cultural projects, so we have to apply for funding, especially NGOs. Artists sell their works, participate in international fairs, in auctions…I believe that one important thing to mention is that last June, several artists from the Paintbrush Factory donated their works for an auction that was held at the Tajan Auction House in Paris. Their works sold for a total of 90 thousand Euros, which subsequently came back to the Factory. The money was spent on investments, repair works, heating, etc. The idea was to make some money that would help develop the community here. I believe that this cohabitation between visual arts and performing arts is quite beneficial. In the first two years, the Factory survived thanks to the funds obtained by NGOs individually, but last year we started to feel the significant contribution of the visual artists, because through their donations they can help a lot. This year there will be another auction, at the same house in Paris, because the French organizers were extremely pleased to see what happened with that money and they thought of helping us maintain an action level that would reflect the importance of the people in the Factory and of their projects.”

Part of the money received last year at the auction in Paris was used to rebuild a socializing area, which will be an art library as well, open to the general public. According to Miki Braniste, this place has long been a dream of the artists in the Factory, so they will donate part of their own collections of art magazines, albums and books.

The artists and cultural operators in the Factory report to the community, as the public is the one that keeps them going and motivates them to keep investing in a place that has already become a landmark for the city of Cluj-Napoca. For instance, one of the projects underway at the Factory is a musical communication workshop, where the participants can use all sorts of instruments, better or less known, new or ancient. It’s actually a work in progress show, called Feed me Back, which each time adapts to the public. Another project is called “Your brain on drums”, which, according to the organizers, is not just a course on drumming, but of learning how to get in harmony with your own being and your own rhythm.

He is the author of “The Diary of Happiness”, a work that is unique in Romanian literature; it is a fine piece of writing, basically dealing with how the predicament and suffering people went through in communist prisons can be transfigured through faith. Ileana Malanciou is a distinguished poet, with an impressive lifetime achievement, which includes such literary awards as the “Mihai Eminescu” National Poetry Prize, the Grand Prometheus Prize, the Grand “Lucian Blaga” Prize, the Literary and Arts “Adevarul “ Magazine Prize, the “Opera Omnia” Prize awarded by the Bucharest Writers’ Association. Ileana Malanciou’s output includes volumes of poetry, essays and collections of her contributions as columnist for Romania’s leading literary magazines. In late December 2012, Ileana Malancoiu had her second volume of poems “The Legend of the Walled-In Woman” brought out by the “Gallery Press” Publishers in Ireland. Her first book published in Ireland was entitled “ After Lazarus’s Resurrection.”

Two years ago Ileana Malancioiu was a guest of honor at “ Our Language, Romanian”, an event held in the Republic of Moldova. There, Ileana Malancioiu put forward the idea of erecting a bust for writer Paul Goma, the most important Romanian intellectual dissident, now living in Paris. The event materialized in a volume, entitled “The 2012 Poetry Book”, brought out by ART Publishers. The volume opens up with Ileana Malancioiu’ s poem and includes a choice of poems written by authors from Bessarabia.

Speaking now is Ileana Malancioiu: ” What the intellectuals from Bessarabia did as they were fighting for the Romanian language was of utmost importance. They made the Greater Romania, culture wise. There are good poets there and the Romanian intellectuals’ prejudice still holds, that people there write like in the 19thcentury. I wanted to speak about Paul Goma as I believe that Romania has done a great injustice to him. There are still some of us who speak about him with love. Maybe it was his fault, since his diary has caused some trouble. Actually he voiced his despondency that our enthusiasm in the early 1990s fizzled out. He spoke out of that despondency and people felt the need to isolate him, which is not fair, since he is nonetheless the icon of our resistance, as much as it was. I don’t think it is normal for him to live alone and isolated in Paris, while in Romania all sorts of phony dissidents have cropped up in the meantime. It seems to me the sadness is unfathomable for a man like him to be isolated.”

Ileana Malancioiu graduated form the Philosophy Faculty in 1968. In 1978 her doctoral dissertation was published, entitled. “The Tragic Guilt”. Six volumes of poems were published in the meantime. She had no other choice but to give up on philosophy because, as she said, “those were no times for philosophy.” Even defending her diploma paper, entitled “The Place of Philosophy of Culture in Lucian Blaga’s System” caused quite a stir. Most of her professors accused her of opting for Lucian Blaga’s philosophy after studying Marxist philosophy for five years.

Ileana Malanciou’s activity triggered another scandal when she worked for the television in the early 1970s. Those were the so-called times of opening, when she edited a feature entitled “Contemporary Romanian Poets” where she managed to bring to the public’s attention poems by Alexandru Philippide, Constantin Noica, Dimitrie Stelaru, Eugen Jebeleanu, Emil Botta. When Ileana Malancioiu had the nerve to ask why her show had been cut off from the program, her case was subject to debate in a Communist Party session and Ileana Malancioiu stepped down and quit.

In 1985, her volume ”Climbing the Mountain” was withdrawn from bookshops, the authorities banning any review of the volume. Three years later, as censorship was growing stronger and made its presence felt even in philosopher Constantin Noica’s texts, Ileana Malancioiu submitted her resignation from the “ Viata Romaneasca” literary magazine. We know all to well the Securitate had her under surveillance; that was also confirmed by Dorin Tudoran’s Securitate file.

And yet, Ileana Malanciou says: “I don’t have the merit of real dissidents by far. I only did what a writer has to do to rescue some books. I didn’t accept lies, I didn’t accept censorship, but it cannot be said that I was a dissident. Every time someone asks, I say that Paul Goma was a real dissident. Giving yourself more credit than you deserve is embarrassing. It was a really difficult period, but at ‘Viata romaneasca’ we had a different status than at other magazines, because the magazine had a smaller circulation. For instance, we could push through, with some struggle, texts that would have never seen the light of day in the ‘Romania Literara’ magazine.”

Ileana Malancioiu’s first role models were Sergei Esenin, Mihai Eminescu and George Bacovia.

She talks about their influence and about her obsessions: “I had as much luggage to start me on the road as anyone else. Then you discover yourself. After the first attempts, which were tributary to Eminescu and Bacovia, I threw everything away, because I realized it was imitation, and I had to start over and say whatever I have to say. However, without this school, the model of the great poets, I would have never got to the point where I could say whatever I have said. After that, I started reading Baudelaire properly. By properly I mean reading him line by line, with a pencil in hand, to understand why he is still relevant while others aren’t. Generally, a poet is obsessed with death, especially if he or she is past a certain age. The obsession becomes so great that at a certain point you start being afraid and stop talking about death. You avoid the word as if you avoided death itself. But silence is not bad. There comes a time when you can say things that no longer represent you. And it is better to take some time and read. Reading breaks are very good. You can reach a new stage in your writing, or you can go out with a bang. You can wrap it up without starting to decay.”

To quote the poet, “I don’t want to be different in poetry than I am in reality, but the striving to discover the one word that can express me truly has never ceased, I shudder at the thought that there comes a time when this crisis leads, willy-nilly, to the ultimate silence.” Unquote.

In early December 2012, the central Romanian city of Cluj Napoca hosted the 3rd “Interferences” International Theatre Festival, organised by the Cluj Hungarian State Theatre.

The director of the theatre, Tompa Gabor, attempted a few conclusions for that year’s edition:

Tompa Gabor: “There have been several remarkable performances. We managed to offer the public a number of diverse shows, which seek to recreate or rethink the relationship between music and theatre, because this is the central theme of this festival, ‘Dialogue between Voices.’ We were careful not to have simultaneous shows, so that everybody may see all the plays. I was happy to see that, mid-way into the Festival, the number of viewers was already higher than in the previous editions … I feel that, for the first time, the people of Cluj Napoca were more interested, more curious than they used to be. Some shows were sold out online, even before the festival began. Stage director Purcarete’s shows, ‘The King Dies’ and ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ set the record in this respect.”

The show “The King Dies”/ “Le Roi se meurt”, which was quite popular among experts and the general public alike, was staged by Silviu Purcarete at “Les Arts et Mouvants”, France. The question that stage director Silviu Purcarete asks in his play, which brings Eugene Ionesco’s absurd theatre closer to the public, is “What kind of seeds does a dying man sow?” Here is Silviu Purcarete:

Silviu Purcarete: “I find the text quite clear and very well written. Of course, it is a bit excessive, in quantitative terms, and we had to cut out a lot of it for the show. We focused on story-telling, on making a show which is quite basic, almost without a stage set, with just a few props… The play relies on what the text actually offers, we needn’t look for anything else. The theme is already complex enough, because it discusses something that is not part of a shared experience, something all of us will go through alone. Trying to complicate that would have been too much. The play is about the mystery, agony and inscrutability of this individual experience, as well as about how this reflects on the others. And this is, most of the times, grotesque and comical.”

In a year that UNESCO dedicated to the great Romanian playwright I. L. Caragiale, the Interferences Festival was bound to include performances based on Caragiale’s works. The Cluj Napoca State Theatre, the host of the event, presented a show called “Leonida Gem Session”, adapted by Tompa Gabor and Andras Visky from the works of Caragiale. The play is structured into three parts. The first one includes files from the archives of the communist political police, the Securitate, the second one comprises the actual play written by Caragiale, “Don Leonida and the Right-Wing Conspiracy,” while in the third part, a character from the play, a maid called Safta, is turned into a symbol of ultimate reality. Andras Visky explains:

Andras Visky: “When reality invades this media-dominated world, this world must be confronted with a marginalized reality.”

Director Tompa Gabor explains where the idea of the performance came from.

Tompa Gabor: “Re-reading ‘Conu’ Leonida’ , the only of Caragiale’s plays that I had not directed, I understood that it is actually divided in two. The first part is about glorifying the revolution, a revolution of words rather than a real one, and the second one is about the fear of a real revolution. And then the play started to talk to me about the need to reflect on the 23 years that have passed since December 1989. In order for us to get free and prevent us from being stifled by this recognition, we should carry through the process of rendering our near past transparent. I thought that the characters could be some code names for a social class that dominated the last decades before 1989 and which, I believe, has not totally disappeared, because we have not publicly ended the process of x-raying this phenomenon.”

The 2012 Interferences Theatre Festival, had the logo dialogue among voices”, so musicians were among the guests. Composer Vasile Sirli, the one who wrote the music for both The King Dies” and “Leonida Gem Session”, talked at a meeting with the public about his interest in theatre music.

Vasile Sirli: “I’m interested in getting to know people through music and letting them enrich me. I work with them as if I worked with musicians, with people who are specialists in literature, of which I know almost nothing. I’m interested in their musicality, even when they do not have an ear for music, I’m interested in their rhythm, even when they can’t make the distinction between one and the other. I’m interested in providing them with some elements of musical logic. And I think it’s very important for actors, the director, the stage director, to all participate in a show where the music is adopted. I’ve always seen myself as adopted by theatre.”

In figures, the 2012 Interferences International Theatre Festival was: 13 days of events, 21 performances, 9 countries. However, the program also included concerts, book launches, workshops, photo and musical installations exhibitions, discussions with the public. The third edition, dedicated to the dialogue between theatre and music, was also a platform for the performances given by the members of the European Theatres’ Union.

Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two of the world’s most highly acclaimed filmmakers to come from Belgium visited Romania for the first time to launch their latest film “The Kid with a Bike”. They were invited by the Walloon-Brussels Delegation in Bucharest as part of a special event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Delegation’s opening an office in Romania.

The film distributed by Independenta Film was then shown in cinemas across Romania. The Kid with a BIke had its official premiere in the international competition at the Cannes Festival in 2011 when it won the Grand Jury Prize.

The film was written, directed and produced by ean Pierre and Luc Dardenne and featured Cecile de France, Thomas Doret and Jeremie Renie. The production tells the touching tale of a 12-year old boy who desperately tries to find the father who had abandoned him in a foster home. The film was also awarded the best original screenplay award in 2011 at the European Film Awards, while Thomas Doret walked away with the Les Magrittes du Cinema award for most promising newcomer. But here’s Jean Pierre Dardenne speaking about the film:

“After all, I think you have to see this film as a story, because the characters are not essentially very sophisticated. I would even say they are more in the vein of ‘Pinocchio’. The main character has started a journey of initiation. He enters a forest and has to deal with negative characters, with the Fox. In this sense, I’d say our film has something I would call simplicity. It can even be seen as a fairy tale, with Samantha being the Good Fairy. And just like in any other fairy tale, the main character needs to be disillusioned in order to grow up. In the case of our main protagonist, the illusion he had to lose is that of ever seeing his father again.”

In 2006, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne were the ones who handed the Camera D’Or Award of the Cannes Film Festival to Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu for his debut feature film “12:08. East of Bucharest”. In fact. the two Belgian filmmakers say they are great admirers of Romanian cinema. Here’s Luc Dardenne:

”We are familiar with the work of Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristi Puiu, and I can say that new wave of Romanian cinema was a revelation for us. I think Cristian Mungiu’s ‘Four months, Three Weeks and Two Days’ is an exceptional film. As for Corneliu Porumboiu, as chairmen of the Camera D’Or Jury at the Cannes Festival we decided the award should go to this young Romanian filmmaker for his extraordinary comedy. I liked his film so much that the first thing I did when we arrived in Romania was to go and see the balcony where the dictator Ceausescu gave his last speech to the masses. We have a great admiration for Romanian cinema and we are sure this country is full of talented filmmakers.”

The two Belgian filmmakers have so much faith in Romanian cinema that their film production company “Les Films du Fleuve” co-produced Cristian Mungiu’s latest film:

“We expressed our interest for Cristian Mungiu’s film, even before reading the script. After we read the script we liked it so much that we immediately accepted to coproduce it. We are proud and delighted to be part of this project”.

As regards the screening of European films in cinemas, the two French filmmakers believe European productions are not promoted enough:

“We understand that the problem in Romania has to do with the distribution of the films in cinemas. There is a similar situation in Belgium, where there is an invasion of Hollywood productions. This is unfortunate, because we should be able to see films from all over the world. This is why we hold the Cannes Film Festival in such great esteem, because the people there don’t have prejudices. The jury, the professionals who make the selection of films, are not interested where a particular film was produced. It is remarkable that such festivals still exist, festivals that allow national film industries to become international. Our films won international recognition thanks to this festival”.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s first feature film, “Falsch”, was premiered in 1987. Since then, the two won Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival twice, first in 1999 for “Rosetta” and again in 2005 for “The Child”. In 2002, “The Son” brought the two filmmakers the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, while Olivier Gourmet walked home with the prize for Best Actor.