Category: World of Culture

  • “Maxim Dumitraș – Son and Father” Exhibition

    “Maxim Dumitraș – Son and Father” Exhibition

    In early December, the Pavel Șușară Modern and
    Contemporary Art Museum in Bucharest (MAMCO) hosted the opening of an
    exhibition bringing two generations into a dialogue. The exhibition, entitled Maxim
    Dumitraș – Son and Father, is curated by Pavel Șușară and Dalina Bădescu, and
    will be open until the beginning of February 2024. We asked one of its curators
    about the significance of this exhibition in the contemporary art landscape and
    about what makes it unique in Romania:


    Pavel Șușară:
    Indeed, it is a special-even more than special-event. It is unique in that
    such an exhibition is impossible to organise again: even if in principle someone
    could retrace the same scenario, the characters that made this exhibition
    possible would be missing. It is an art exhibition, at a basic, superficial
    level, and obviously we have all the art’s conventions present, we have
    painting, graphic art, sculpture, all the classical genres, but what makes it
    unique is its human content, its birth and its development, its substance. It
    showcases the last period in the life of Max Dumitraș’s father, who, in order
    to alleviate his loneliness and fears, was asked by Max to draw lines over a number of compositions by Max Dumitraș. What seemed to be a stereotypical
    kind of work and a routine movement grew into a form of shelter from anxieties,
    from loneliness, from the imminence of death which he obviously felt coming. It
    became a sort of curtain, a sort of fence separating his world and the world
    beyond, which was the world shaped and created by Max. But with these lines, Max’s
    father created a protective screen, where he was safe from his own fears, and
    with time, this fence became a sort of radiograph or a map of his physical and
    psychological state. The lines become more and more faltering, less precise, more
    and more fluid, until eventually it becomes completely random and unnatural. So
    this makes the exhibition a meditation on life and death, a sort of redemption through
    art, a kind of therapy for one’s dreads, a space where the certainty of
    existing is still meaningful. It is yet another certainty.



    We also asked Pavel Șușară what place does the
    artist Maxim Dumitraș hold in Romanian contemporary art:

    Pavel Șușară: He is an institution. Apart from having
    created institutions, Maxim Dumitraș is an institution himself, in what he
    achieved and in how he created events around him, organised symposiums,
    arranged a natural space, some ravines which he turned into residences and work
    areas for artists. And he did not embellish nature, he did not introduce
    artificial elements in a natural setting, but integrated art in a natural
    setting, thus proving that art in general, creation, is not separated from the
    world for which we are not responsible, but rather a form of continuity and a
    form of noticing its harmony.


    Pavel Șușară also told us about the plans MAMCO has
    for the year 2024:


    Pavel Șușară: We have already scheduled exhibitions
    for the entire year. We have a joint project with the Art Biennale in Plovdiv,
    Bulgaria and we are partners in 2024. There will be 10 Romanian artists showing
    their works there. Towards the end of the year we will have the miniature
    salon, which we have turned into a biennale. All in all, we have some 6-7
    exhibitions scheduled for next year.


    In turn, the artist Maxim Dumitraș also gave us details
    about the process behind this project completed together with his father in the
    latter’s last years of life:


    Maxim Dumitraș: I started it 8 years ago, I worked
    with my father. He worked on the composition’s vertical axis, I worked on the
    colour. We intervened and we worked together on these items, which are in fact
    some canes which turned into something else over time, just like the father
    line. They turned into objects that must be touched, we called them objects of
    better. I worked on some 150 drawings with my father, we made some books
    called Bags of dreams, in which he also made the lines and I did the colour. Between
    the ages of 71 and 92, he was my apprentice in the atelier every day. When he
    was younger, I used to be his apprentice, then we switched roles and he became
    the creator-apprentice. He was a sort of philosopher, a person of exceptional
    fairness and elegance.


    At the end of the interview, Maxim Dumitraș told us
    about his accomplishments in 2023:


    Maxim Dumitraș: I always try to simplify things, but
    every year they get more and more complicated. I made a monumental sculpture,
    some 15 tonnes in weight. I had an exhibition in Bistrița and several other
    projects in Sângeorz-Băi. It was a very prolific year, so to say. (AMP)

  • Monica Lovinescu at Casa Radio Publishing House

    Monica Lovinescu at Casa Radio Publishing House

    On the centenary of Monica Lovinescu’s birth, Casa Radio Publishing House released an album dedicated to the most important female voice of the Romanian exile during Communism, journalist and literary critic Monica Lovinescu. After graduating from the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest (1946), Monica Lovinescu collaborated with various cultural publications. She obtained a scholarship from the French state in 1947, and went to Paris under risky conditions. Immediately after the forced abdication of King Mihai I, she asked for political asylum in France. After a period in which she directed some avant-garde shows, she devoted herself to the radio, starting in 1951. Starting in 1962, she started working with Radio Free Europe, where she had two weekly shows: Romanian Cultural Current Affairs and Theses and Antitheses in Paris. These shows had a strong influence in Romania, both in the cultural circles and among the general public. Monica Lovinescu wrote articles and studies about Romanian literature and communist ideology in numerous publications: East Europe, Kontinent, Preuves, L’Alternative, Les Cahiers de L’Est, Témoignages, La France Catholique. The album released by Casa Radio Publishing House includes a book and two Cds, and is entitled MONICA LOVINESCU. And I chose the microphone. Interviews on Radio Romania (1993-2004). The album features a presentation by journalist Anca Mateescu, producer at Radio Romania Cultural, who is also the author of the interviews on the two Cds.




    Here is Dorin-Liviu Bîtfoi, producer at Casa Radio Publishing House, about Monica Lovinescu and the album released by the publishing house.


    “We could say, perhaps quoting a cliché, but with a lot of truth in it, that she is the voice of dignity and the voice of free conscience, both for Romanians in exile and very much for Romanians in the country, who listened to her assiduously on the radio. They listened to her to find out how to live in the free world, but also to be aware of the abuses in the closed world, the world in Romania, the communist world. I really enjoyed working on this book because it is very current, it is very current for those who want to learn about the recent past and its effects, because the effects are still being seen today. It is very interesting to read this book, but also to listen to it, because, as you know, the album also includes an audiobook. The two CDs that include the interviews with Monica Lovinescu are the result of an admirable documentation and consistency, I would say very rare in that period. That’s why I admire the journalist Anca Mateescu, for the tenacity she showed.




    To mark one hundred years since the birth of Monica Lovinescu, the Humanitas Aqua Forte Foundation and the Humanitas Publishing House have proposed an exercise of admiration with a rich agenda of events held throughout the entire year 2023 – THE YEAR OF MONICA LOVINESCU. The writer Ioana Pârvulescu, president of the jury of the first edition of the Monica Lovinescu Award, was present at the launch of the album published by the Casa Radio Publishing House.


    “This little book has a voice. You’re going to tell me that all books have a voice. Of course, all books have a voice, but this book has the voice of Monica Lovinescu. It is a book that was born from the meeting of two journalists, and I will say here bluntly that I admire Anca Mateescu. She is an extraordinary journalist who, in addition to preparing, asks questions that stimulate you. Asks questions that show she knows what she’s talking about, not questions that clip your wings. Anca Mateescu has this gift of asking the right question, the question that stimulates you, in this book as well. The first interview in this book of interviews with Monica Lovinescu was made when Anca Mateescu was 27 years old, at the beginning of her career as a journalist, and, as the presentation shows, it was not easy for Anca Mateescu to get close to Monica Lovinescu, but in the end she succeeded. And what resulted is an extraordinary testimony. I am convinced that this book will increase in value with each passing year. I was saying that I was particularly interested in the interview in which Monica Lovinescu talks about her father, the critic Eugen Lovinescu, whom she certainly saw as a father, but whose public image she had to accept, that of a literary critic. The interview about Cenaclul Sburătorul, conducted by Eugen Lovinescu, is worthy of literary history, and I will probably recommend it to my students, in this way they will learn more about the literature of the interwar period.




    In the dialogues with the journalist Anca Mateescu, the moments that marked Monica Lovinescu’s destiny are recalled: leaving the country and going to Paris, her beginnings as a director in Paris, the meeting with Noël Bernard, journalist, director of the Romanian Service at Radio Europa Liberă, her career in literature , the assassination of the mother, Ecaterina Bălăcioiu-Lovinescu. Also, personalities from the country and from exile are evoked: her father, the critic Eugen Lovinescu, Ion Barbu, Camil Petrescu, Dan Petraşincu, Eugen Ionescu, Ştefan Lupaşcu, Emil Cioran, Ion Negoiţescu, Ion Omescu.


  • “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” wins the UNITER Award for the best radio show of 2022

    “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” wins the UNITER Award for the best radio show of 2022

    The UNITER award for the best radio show performed in 2022 went to the Radio Romania National Radiophonic Theater for the production The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King turned out to be the listeners’ favorite show, being the most voted radio production in audience’s bet contest, a tradition established and maintained by UNITER over time. The show was aimed to mark the bicentenary of the passing away of the famous German romantic writer and is signed by the director Diana Mihailopol. Here is Attila Vizauer, editor-in-chief of the National Radiophonic Theatre, about the new staging of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.



    It was a very interesting bet. We felt the need for a new, fresh version of this story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, so we invited Diana Mihailopol to think about the possibility of producing a radio show based on this classic and well-known text. I admit I thought it might create a hit in this area. Well, Diana Mihailopol showed not only that she was interested in the text and that she treated it in a very generous way, that she was very inspired when she wrote the script, the radio adaptation of this story. She intervened with great sophistication in the text and managed to build a story with a formidable cast: Marian Râlea, Diana Rotaru, Marius Manole, Lucian Ionescu, Rodica Mandache. As I said, a formidable cast that helped make this a very, very beautiful show. Which is why it was no wonder that it won this year’s UNITER award for best radio theater show.



    Diana Mihailopol believes that the proposal to stage a show after The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann was for her a real challenge. Diana Mihailopol:


    I thought of and worked on this production trying to address not only children. I was happy that I was offered this text to adapt it for radio and, as I said when I was awarded, I got very close to that story. The radio adaptation addresses both adults and teenagers, I think it reaches listeners regardless of their age. There are some accents in this show that anyone can understand, it is primarily the evil personified by the Mouse King, but not only him. There is also the idea that evil has always existed. At the end of the adaptation, different from the story of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet, both of which have happy endings, the Mouse King returns. And he returns after the good seems to have prevailed and ideals achieved. The Mouse King returns and this return of his is underlined by a repeated line, stressed by Marius Manole, who plays in the show. It is a text that helps you understand what experiences you have to live as an adult. It is a story about the coming of age of a girl, about the coming of age of little Marie, who in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet is called Clara. Little Marie goes through this process of growing up and manages to find her way.



    The actress of the German State Theater in Timişoara, Olga Török, handed the director Diana Mihailopol the UNITER trophy, the award for the best radio show staged in 2022 , at the 31st UNITER Awards Gala. Here is Diana Mihailopol again:


    It was a surprise because, first of all, it is a story perceived mainly as a children’s story. And these children’s stories are unfortunately considered minor, they play a secondary role, although I know many adults who love them, who are nostalgic for the stories they read when they were little. Perhaps many feel that The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is not or is no longer a story for our times, a story to be read in 2023, but I find it very current and I think it includes and reflects many of our current concerns. It is an adaptation that also benefits from an extraordinary cast, I was lucky that Alina Rotaru agreed to play the role of little Marie. As I said, it is about a little girl who fears that her innocence will end with the passing of the years and that her growing up will be complicated by the appearance of other feelings, which is what actually happens.



    The show The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, under the artistic direction of Diana Mihailopol, was also awarded at the Radio Romania Grand Prix Nova awards ceremony. The award for best supporting actress went to Manuela Ciucur for the role of Mrs. Mauserinks, queen over mice, and the Ilinca Tomoroveanu debut award went to Alina Rotaru for the role of Marie in the same show. (MI)




  • Cosmina Stratan shines in “Frère et soeur”

    Cosmina Stratan shines in “Frère et soeur”

    At the beginning of year, the film “Frère et soeur”/”Brother and Sister”, directed by Arnaud Desplechin, was screened in Romanian cinemas. Part of the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, the production features renowned actors like Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud. Alice (Marion Cotillard) and Louis (Melvil Poupaud) are brother and sister in the film. She is an actress and he is a teacher and poet. They havent seen each other for more than two decades, but the death of their parents makes their reunion inevitable. The cast of the film “Frère et soeur” also includes Romanian actress Cosmina Stratan, awarded in 2012 in Cannes for her exceptional performance in the film “Beyond the Hills”, directed by Cristian Mungiu.



    In the new film, directed by Arnaud Desplechin, Cosmina Stratan plays the role of Lucia, a Romanian immigrant who Alices best frind. Arnaud Desplechin had also cast Cosmina in his film, “Tromperie”, but due to the pandemic, the collaboration did not materialise. Cosmina Stratan: “We were left with a feeling of regret that we did not manage to synchronize, especially since it doesn’t happen often that a director you admire to offer you a part in one of his films. But Arnaud Desplechin understood that my absence was motivated. I had the feeling that he made room for me in this new film, from the beginning. That is why I was less nervous than usual – I knew it was a character created for me. As for the role Im playing, I cant say it was too difficult, because I am a fan of Marion Cotillard anyway, so it wasnt difficult for me to show it on screen. What Ive noticed about my favourite actors and partners that Ive worked with so far is that they get over the normal initial awkwardness very quickly. It is not very easy for us either to overcome this barrier at the beginning. We are people who meet for the first time on a film set and it is impossible to ignore this distance that separates us. At the same time, we have a common goal, to get to understand the character that we are playing, so that we can explore the situations in the film together. With Marion Cottilard this process was natural. She also wanted to overcome that distance and we collaborated very well. We synchronised and that helped a lot, especially because it’s much more difficult to overcome your emotions when you are working with someone you really admire.”





    Originally from Iasi, Cosmina Stratan studied journalism and worked at the Student Opinion magazine. In 2008, she was admitted to the Acting Department of the University of Theater and Cinematography in Bucharest. After acting in several short films, the actress played the role of Voichița, a young mother who sees her childhood friend again, in Cristian Mungius film, După dealuri (Over the Hillls), a role for which she received the award for female performance at the Film Festival in Cannes. French director Arnaud Desplechin stated that he chose Cosmina Stratan for the role of Lucia in Brother and Sister after noticing her in the production Over the Hillls. Cosmina Stratan:


    “It was a role that I consider a turning point, even if it came up at the beginning of my career. A turning point, in the sense that Over the Hills was my first major film, and also my first paid job in this business. I say the first paid job because in college we, the actors, do all kinds of practice with our colleagues from the directing department, but those are roles for which we are not paid. In my case, everything happened at once, the first paid job, and the first leading role, and the Cannes Performance Award. It was somehow a confirmation that I was looking for, because acting is a job where you can also have insecurities. I needed feedback, an answer that I was in the right place, and because before acting I had tried other jobs, acting was the second option for me, and the role in Over the Hills was a great help. This recognition, due to the visibility of the film and the character, helped me continue my career and gave me hope that I would act in other films. Somehow this story reassured me, it assured me that something else would follow, because I had that anxiety that many actors have at the beginning of their journey, especially if they are on their own and are not employed in a theater. At the beginning it is quite complicated to imagine the future.”




    Cosmina Stratan also played a role in the short film “Intercom 15”, written and directed by Andrei Epure, selected in 2021 in the La Semaine de la Critique competition at the Cannes Film Festival.





  • Andezit 10, A Sculpture Exhibition

    Andezit 10, A Sculpture Exhibition

    The Simeza Gallery in Bucharest presents in November the traveling group exhibition Andezit 10. The exhibition had a route through several galleries in Romania, the exhibition in Bucharest being the end of its journey. 10 established visual artists present works closely related to the Via Transilvanica – The Uniting Road, the long-distance tourist route (on foot, by bike, or on horseback) (1400 kilometers) that crosses Romania diagonally, from the Putna Monastery in Moldova (north-east Romania), to Drobeta-Turnu Severin (south-west Romania). Some kilometer markers of the route are made by artists out of andesite (igneous rock resulting from a volcanic eruption).




    At the opening, we spoke with the initiator of the project and one of the exhibiting artists, the sculptor Maxim Dumitraș, about how the exhibition at the Simeza Gallery was born and how the team of creative sculptors of the exhibition was formed:


    This exhibition was born from a Via Transilvanica monumental sculpture symposium, where each artist made 5 or 6 milestones. They are all members participating in this symposium. We used andesite as a raw material, and each artist proposed their own projects, which I think will be done in time and will be monumental. I built the team knowing that the artists work in andesite. It is a very hard material, more so than granite. Naturally, you have to have experience with this material, and this is how I selected the artists. We made 6 milestones, as I said, each with one’s own project. This exhibition traveled from the Museum of Comparative Art in Sângeorz-Băi, to Baia Mare, Sighetu Marmației, Bacău, Iași, and now we end a one-year cycle at the Simeza Gallery in Bucharest. We worked on Via Transilvanica, on the hills, after which we exhibited them along the route. We built the exhibition to fit the hall.




    Maxim Dumitraș gave us some details about how to work with andesite, a hard and difficult material to process:


    It’s a special technique, there are special rotary tools, you can’t play with just any material. It’s tough, but it’s fantastic when the sculpture is finished. I used it for the first time in the sculpture circuit about 10 years ago, a lot of work was also done in symposia. It is a type of stone very resistant to time and weather. And what’s interesting is that you can give it a finish from a rough surface to an ultra-finished surface, close to the level of the glass.




    Visual artist Bogdan Pelmus, present in the exhibition with sculpture works, spoke to us about the Andezit 10 project:


    I didn’t graduate sculpture school, I graduate painting, actually, but I found it interesting to work with objects. I work with objects, with video, with several media. And I found the material very interesting, because it’s very hard, and you can get the exact opposite out of it. It depends on how you play with it.




    We asked what works Bogdan Pelmuș exhibited in the Simeza Gallery exhibition.


    There are two pieces, they are called Flight, and two drawings, somehow complementing the idea of duality, search, interior, treasure, childhood. Meaning the way can you maturely bring ideas out of your personal self.




    The President of the Union of Fine Artists (UAP), the artist Petru Lucaci, present at the opening, told us:


    “It’s wonderful what’s going on here. It is a challenge both for the sculptors and for us to witness such a deployment of force, because we can even speak of force here. Andesite is a very hard kind of rock. I have met the sculptors in symposia, and I was impressed by the kind of effort they make to identify in a stone block an image, an idea, a form, or a message. The works are interesting, the group is at the same time homogeneous, but multiple personalities are identified here, because they are artists with experience in creation camps, and in working with such materials. It is an original material, with an impressive expressive force. We are used to working with white stone, it is a softer, more malleable, easier to master limestone. When it comes to andesite, it’s a terrific challenge, and the effect is absolutely impressive.




    Petru Lucaci also talked to us about how he sees this project from a curatorial point of view, the project being curated by the exhibiting artists themselves:


    It seems to me that the exhibition makes sense, it is unitary and it has strength, because those who have gathered here know each other, they know each other’s potential, they know the potential of the material they work with, and I think they have found a very good formula for putting their ideas into action.




    How did 2023 look from the UFA perspective? What does the Union of Fine Artists prepare for lovers of beauty? Here is president Petru Lucaci:


    For now we are trying to take stock of the National Contemporary Art Show, which I say was far-reaching. It took place in 15 different spaces, some of them quite large, those at the Fine Arts Complex, where we have 8 galleries that I think are impressive in size. There are the former warehouses of the complex, which have turned into a cultural hub, probably the biggest in Romania, and where things happen on a different scale than we can manage in the galleries in the city, which certainly have more domestic, more human dimensions . We are preparing another event now, soon. We finished the new building, the headquarters of the Union of Fine Artists, which also has an art gallery on the ground floor. So we are trying to show to the world the exhibition that we organized there in a more official context, that of the inauguration of the Union headquarters. It is the first time that the Union has its own home, which is extremely important.



  • The Accelerator Project

    The Accelerator Project

    October was a month when Romanian contemporary art won a number of battles to secure European funding. One of the programs that help promote contemporary art is the Accelerator, Coaching and Production Programme addressing emerging artists, implemented by the Eastwards Prospectus Cultural Association (ACEP). The program was designed as an incubator of ideas and a springboard for the career of 10 emerging artists by providing them with the proper tools to develop a strategic, integrated and sustainable approach to their artistic careers. One of the major partners of this project was the GAEP Gallery, a local art gallery that observes international standards.



    We spoke to project manager and ACEP president Andrei Breahnă: “The Accelerator Project, a coaching and production program addressing emerging artists, is ending after two years of hard work and many adventures. The final stage of the project unfolded this summer and entailed implementing an art project in the public sphere. Seven of the ten artists participated with individual projects. Their approach was rather flexible, as we wanted to remain open-minded and not impose restrictions regarding a certain theme. Basically, from the early stages of the project, we suggested that artists should work with local communities and identify those areas that are inhabited by communities and create a link between their works and the people living there”.



    What types of art has the Accelerator Project generated? Speaking about the Accelerator Project, Andrei Breahnă told us more about a collective work elaborated in Bucharest and coordinated by a contemporary artist from Iceland, an expert in the art made in the public space: “We obtained a wide array of works, particularly in the experimental area. We actually encouraged the artists to experiment a lot. We’ve had an artist from Iceland who served as one of the coaches. She came to Romania to take part in the two-day coaching program. She is someone who specializes in creating art for the public sphere. During the research trip to Iceland, she presented a number of very ambitious works of art. We traveled to a number of cities. One project, which was presented in Bucharest, Timișoara and Cluj, was an experimental collective work that consisted of a limestone ball that kept on rolling, leaving behind a visible or an invisible trace between various areas of the city. The idea behind this project was that our biggest cities are in fact extended geographical areas, and more often than not whole residential areas are cut off from access to culture, and have to travel long distances for that purpose. Our artists somehow recreated that journey in very concrete terms, because every artist had to roll the ball and create a clear link between various parts of the city. This type of interaction was very interesting”.



    The director of the GAEP Gallery also told us about another work from the Accelerator Project, a sound work carried out in the city of Oltenița (southern Romania). Moreover, Andrei Breahnă told us about the difficulties he faced in implementing the project: “We had a work of sound in Oltenita. One of the artists in the project, Alina Ion, comes from Oltenița. She imagined a kind of walk that we were taking, with headphones on, listening to her, how she related, lets say, from the perspective of childhood or sometimes even very intimately, to various areas of the city. And the city is very interesting, because it is on the Danube. We have a very interesting work, with a semi-permanent character, in front of the Gloria cinema in Bucharest, in sector 3, a work by Maria Mandea. The research she usually makes is related to games, to the notion of ownership, to how we live, to spaces. And we also had an event there, where we did many games together with those who were passing by and who thus participated in the work. So, it was an adventure, especially since we had never done projects like this before. We had to interact quite a lot with the local authorities to get approvals, and unfortunately we also faced a kind of legislative vacuum, because there is no legislation specific to art in the public space in Romania, as we see it at a conceptual level, not only from the perspective of the monument or from the perspective of the event. But eventually we were able to produce these works and in a way we achieved our goal because we were able to go to more cities, we were able to interact with more types of communities and we were able to involve the artists. We added this layer, this dimension of art in the public space intentionally, because we wanted to give a much larger dimension, much more accessible to contemporary art.”



    Is the Accelerator Project continuing? Andrei Breahnă has the answer: “The project does not end here. Cultural projects like this have a beginning and an end. The beauty of this project is that it is based on a very concrete need, that of giving a strategic dimension to artists who have ended studies and have an artistic practice, and to show them what the system of contemporary art is like, how the art market works, how art works in the public space, how to communicate in the context of artistic practice, how to work with a curator. The project continues and I want this series of accelerators to be an identity, an element of identity of our association.” (VP, LS)

  • At 83 actress Dorina Lazăr features in new film and theater play

    At 83 actress Dorina Lazăr features in new film and theater play

    Dorina Lazăr, one of the most appreciated actresses in Romania, received this year the Excellence Award of the Radio Romania Culture Awards Gala. Appreciated by the public and critics alike, Dorina Lazăr has played dozens of roles, both in theater plays and films. As director of the Odeon Theater for almost 20 years, she always supported young artists and bet on innovative productions. At 83 years old, Dorina Lazăr returns to theater and film with two remarkable roles. She plays the leading role in Radu Jude’s new film, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Silver Leopard – Special Jury Prize, a Mention from the Ecumenical Jury and First Prize from the Youth Jury. The second memorable role of Dorina Lazăr this year is the main role in Neliniște – Unrest, a play by Ivan Vyrypaev, directed by Bobi Pricop.



    The newest film written and directed by Radu Jude, Romania’s proposal for a nomination at the 2024 Oscar Awards, in the Best International Feature Film category, is a satire about the new Romanian capitalism, a road movie in which Angela (played by Ilinca Manolache) crosses a crowded and hostile Bucharest, a drama about a man paralyzed after an occupational accident, and also a comedy about the making of a labor protection film. We spoke with Dorina Lazăr about the role she plays in Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, about the film and montage, in which images from the production Angela goes on (directed in 1982 by Lucian Bratu, with Dorina Lazăr in the main role) enter into a dialogue with the images of the present.



    It was an extremely pleasant and honorable experience for me, I was happy to meet Radu Jude and shoot the film with him. I worked with a wonderful team, I’m talking mostly about actors, extremely talented and conscientious. Angela Goes On is a very good movie and I highly recommend it. It’s a film that has stood the test of time, even though it was made during communism. A film in which the entire team of actors acted very well and it was directed with great delicacy by Lucian Bratu. The film’s script was written by Eva Sîrbu. It was actually written for the actress Rodica Tapalagă, but Rodica did not know how to drive, so it was decided to choose someone who had a driving license. And since I was driving a car, they cast me as Angela. Coming back to Radu Jude’s film, I thank him for being so gentle, it was great that I played the scenes with my old partner László Miske in the same apartment where I shot Angela goes on. And I noticed during the shoot that on the shelves in that room there were photos of me and László Miske from 40 years ago, when we made that film. I can’t tell you how good and valued I felt, it’s a pleasure to work with Radu Jude. Not to mention that he handles everything with ease.



    Unrest is the fourth play written by Ivan Vyrypaev, a contemporary Russian playwright, theater and film director, screenwriter, producer and actor based in Poland and currently banned from theaters in his native country due to his anti-war stance. The play was staged by director Bobi Pricop at the Odeon Theatre. Similar to life, theater is and causes anxiety; each of us is a ball of anxieties that art, in all its forms, tries, and maybe even helps, to untangle says the director Bobi Pricop, who considers the role of Dorina Lazăr absolutely fantastic, of an overwhelming strength and scenic truth.



    Here is next Dorina Lazăr, who plays the role of the writer Ula Richter: When I invited the director Bobi Pricop to stage a show at the Odeon Theatre, last year, I was still the theaters director. I asked Bobi Pricop to come up with some proposals, and he came up with this piece, Unrest by Vyrypaev. I asked him about the cast, and he told me that I would play the lead role. I immediately refused, I told him no. No, for two reasons. The first is that I have grown old and you never know when that time comes, so I wouldn’t want the theater to invest in a show that after that can’t be played anymore. Or I might lose my memory and it is very difficult to find someone to replace you in such a role. But when I read the text translated into Romanian – I had originally read it in English – I realized that I really like it and that no matter what happens, I want to play this role. And so, we hit the road with five more actors, all stars.



    Nicoleta Lefter, Niko Becker, Alexandru Papadopol, Mihai Smarandache and Gabriel Pintilei complete the cast of the show Unrest, selected in the recent edition of the National Theater Festival. (LS)

  • The translator Lora Nenkovska, a guest at the FILIT workshops

    The translator Lora Nenkovska, a guest at the FILIT workshops


    The FILIT – Iasi International Festival of Literature and Translation workshops, organized by the National Museum of Romanian Literature of Iași in collaboration with the Ipotești Memorial – Mihai Eminescu National Studies Center, preceded the Iași International Festival of Literature and Translation – FILIT, reaching the 9th edition this year. Lora Nenkovska from Bulgaria, the guest of today’s World of Culture, is an excellent translator of Romanian literature, a lecturer of Romanian language and literature at the University of Sofia Kliment Ohridski who participated in many editions of the FILIT workshops. We spoke with her about the importance of the FILIT workshops, which aim to support cultural cooperation, heritage promotion and contemporary creation at an international level:



    First of all, I would dare say that events like this are vital for us as translators. It is very important to meet and talk about our projects, about the problems we come across. By translating, we learn all our life, it is a process that never ends, as is my career as a university lecturer, we are still a kind of students who do not stop studying all our lives. And that is our choice, to learn, to search, to read. For me, it is very interesting to connect with what my colleagues from abroad are doing, because everyone comes with their own taste in literature, with the translations they are working on, with what they have discovered new, and that’s how we get to have some very interesting discussions. Furthermore, what I really like about these workshops organized by the National Museum of Romanian Literature of Iaşi in collaboration with the Ipotesti Memorial is that we also benefit from some very interesting lectures, such as those given recently by writers and critics such as Bogdan Crețu, Doris Mironescu, Florin Bican, Ioana Both and Radu Vancu. There were lectures that would interest anyone who reads or studies Romanian literature. Most of these conferences were rather theoretical and were aimed at giving us a deeper understanding of Romanian literature. Bogdan Crețu talked to us about the scholar Dimitrie Cantemir and for me it was a very interesting lecture, especially since I really like his book dedicated to Cantemir, ‘The Unicorn at the Gates of the Orient’. As I have said, it is vital for me to connect with what my colleagues are doing, to their translation concerns. It is very important to exchange opinions, to talk about the books we are translating, about what we have discovered in Romanian literature. We are like a small international society that speaks Romanian and discusses Romanian literature.



    Lora Nenkovska has translated into Bulgarian works by Matei Vișniec, Petru Cimpoeşu, Mircea Eliade, Dan Lungu, Claudiu Komartin, Elena Vlădăreanu, Simona Popescu, Ioan Es. Pop, Max BlecherandAndreea Răsuceanu. In recent years, she has also translated excerpts from the novels of the writers nominated for the Sofia Nădejde women’s award for literature. We spoke to Lora Nenkovska about her passion for Romanian literature and its good reception in Bulgaria:



    I came across Romanian literature quite by chance. In 2003 I arrived in Romania on a scholarship. I was studying Balkan languages at the time, Greek, Neo-Greek, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian and Romanian. At that time, it was almost impossible to leave Bulgaria to study a language abroad, but an opportunity arose and I got to go to Timișoara, where I spent a month, studying under the writer Adriana Babeți, which was a wonderful experience. I would spend most of that time at university, but I was also lucky to catch a theatre festival for students so I ended up going to lots of performances. It’s at that festival that I first came across the plays of Matei Vișnic and I remember thinking that if this country can produce such a great playwright, then I must find out more about its literature. So I bought lots of books, I must have come back with an entire library. That’s how I began to read Romanian literature, which I think is very alive and diverse, and which I am constantly discovering. I also like it that it pays great attention to social problems. As a translator, I am also very interested in this aspect, namely the subject of a book, and I don’t look at a text only from a stylistic point of view. I’m also very interested in literature written by women.



    The most recent book translated by Lora Nenkovska into Bulgarian is Andreea Răsuceanu’s novel Vântul, duhul, suflarea [The Wind, the Spirit, the Breath], published by Polirom in Romania and by ICU Publishing in Bulgaria. The translator is also working on an academic paper about traumas in Romanian contemporary literature written by women.


  • Romania’s Entry for the Academy Awards

    Romania’s Entry for the Academy Awards

    A road-movie, but also a drama, a comedy and a satire, but also a montage film, plus a digital avatar, anecdotes and music – all these characteristics can be attributed to the new film by director and screenwriter Radu Jude, Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World. It is Romania’s proposal for the Oscars, the American Academy Awards in 2024. Actress Ilinca Manolache and non-professional actor Ovidiu Pîrsan play the main roles.




    The film Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World premiered at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Silver Leopard – Special Jury Prize, Mention from the Ecumenical Jury and First Prize from Youth Jury.




    Radu Jude is one of the most appreciated contemporary directors nationally and internationally, winner of several awards, among which we mention the Berlin International Film Festival in 2009, with his debut film, The Happiest Girl in the World , the Silver Bear, in 2015, with the film Aferim!, and last but not least, the 2018 feature film I Don’t Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, the first Romanian film to be awarded the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary Festival.




    In October, the press conference announcing Romania’s proposal for the Oscars was held. The creative team talked about the digital avatar that appears in the film, avatar created by the lead actress herself. Ilinca Manolache and Radu Jude tell us more about this topic:


    “It started out of me wanting to vent my frustration with this kind of dynamic that I was and still am encountering very often in our society. And I took on the idea, and when I invited Ilinca to play in the film, with Ilinca collaborating for a smaller role in other films and wanting very much to make a film together with a bigger role. I took over the avatar, her creation, because it seemed to me, on the one hand, a very intelligent and very edgy way, with many contradictions and with many asperities, to formulate a criticism, let’s call it that. Because the film spins or goes in several directions, explodes in several directions, one of the directions is related to the very definition, or the attempt to understand what a character means, what it means to create a character, and I thought it was really interesting to have a character that is played by Ilinca, and that character creates another character that is this avatar. As well as what is a mixture between the creation of Ilinca Manolache, the creation of the character, the creation of the platform. And then, there’s something else that interested me, maybe even more than that: what does an image mean? What does the construction of an image mean in relation to reality? What is lost with the appearance of these types of virtual images, and now with AI, this whole story is even more complicated. There’s an energy in these platforms that sends us back a little bit to the beginnings of cinema.




    We asked director Radu Jude how he built the road-movie part of the film, including the montage part inserted into the film, made in black and white style:


    “Regarding the black and white part, things were built step by step, because the script, so to speak, or the project, was built step by step. This idea of creating a montage in which to enter on the side of the main story, the story of Ilinca’s avatar, and then the images from Angela Moves On, by Lucian Bratu, and so on, all this was added later, step by step. We decided to shoot not just in black and white, but we shot on 16mm film, black and white, maybe out of a kind of desire to experiment with a sport that’s almost on the verge of extinction, in a way.




    How did the lead actress Ilinca Manolache receive the offer of this role and how did she create it? Ilinca Manolache told us:


    For me, the most important thing was to be very attentive to what Radu asked me to do, to be super focused on what had to be done during the filming. When I read the script, I said this before, I felt super-represented, so it wasn’t, I didn’t feel this character very far from me, that’s clear. It’s something I’m so proud of, and it represents me so much that I ask myself the question: What am I going to do next? Because something that maybe equals what we did here might be harder to come by.




    In the end, the non-professional actor Ovidiu Pîrsan wanted to specify:


    “I want to tell you that for me it meant a lot, I mean I think it was the most beautiful experience of my life, so to speak, for the first time doing this thing. The role was kind of… it wasn’t hard for me, because I don’t know if you all know, I’m actually in a wheelchair. I told myself, just tell the story, in another version.


  • Bucharest’s outskirts in the inter-war years

    Bucharest’s outskirts in the inter-war years

    From September until
    the middle of November, the Bucharest City Museum is playing host at its
    headquarters in the Suțu Palace, in central Bucharest, to an exhibition that
    takes visitors back, in the city’s past, entitled Bucharest’s outskirts in the
    inter-war years. The inter-war period is defined historically as the 21-year
    period between the two world wars, 1918 to 1939. The Romanian capital Bucharest
    is the country’s most important industrial and commercial centre as well as its
    artistic, cultural and media centre. In 2011, its population was around 2
    million inhabitants, not counting the people transiting the city or those
    living in the surroundings. Bucharest was first mentioned in historical records
    in 1459 and it became the capital of the United Principalities of Wallachia and
    Moldavia in 1862. The curator of the exhibition, Cezar Petre Buiumaci, tells us
    more about the history of the Romanian capital and other details about the city
    in the inter-war period:




    Cezar Buiumaci: The exhibition seeks
    to showcase the development of the capital city throughout time, the
    transformation of the city during its biggest horizontal expansion, which
    occurred in the inter-war period. Bucharest at that time was an open, welcoming
    city, despite frequent attempts to limit its geographical and demographic
    expansion. Bucharest’s becoming the capital of Wallachia, and then of the
    United Principalities and of Greater Romania worked as a magnet for people from
    other parts, who brought along their own cultural heritage, transforming the
    city into an exciting metropolis. Most of the people who arrived here were not
    wealthy and would settle in the cheaper areas of the city, on its outskirts, thus
    contributing to its geographical expansion.




    The collection of the
    Bucharest City Museum contains photographic records of the city’s outskirts,
    the areas that were about to be expanded, and which disappeared in the second
    part of the 20th century. Curator Cezar
    Buiumaci tells us what the
    exhibition seeks to achieve:

    Cezar Buiumaci: I have tried, and hopefully
    achieved to showcase the urban outskirts of a developing city. Bucharest’s
    dynamic is unique in Romania, its growth has been constant, which is why we are
    constantly witnessing changes. Whereas in the 17th Century it was
    limited to the University area, in the early 19th Century it reached
    today’s Athenaeum building, and by the end of that century it had reached
    today’s Victory Square, or rather it followed a circular road on a route
    connecting the city’s main railway stations. In order to understand the city’s
    geographical growth, we must take a look at statistics, and also at the
    following demographics: in 1831 Bucharest had around 60,000 inhabitants, but in
    1859 the figure was double. At the end of the 19th Century its
    population reached some 230,000, and in 1930, in the middle of the inter-war
    period, 640,000 people were living in
    Bucharest; in the mid-20th Century its population reached 1 million, and the figure
    doubled in the 1980s.


    What can
    visitors see at the exhibition in Suțu Palace? Here is Cezar Buiumaci:


    Cezar Buiumaci: The exhibition presents the outskirts of the
    city, following the road mentioned before, but it features what could be seen
    at that time beyond this peripheral road, the areas scheduled to be demolished,
    which were photographed by the best photographers of the times at the request
    of the local administration. There are 60 photographs, depicting various
    aspects of life at the outskirts. The public may see what neighbourhood pubs
    used to look like, what some of the streets looked like before being paved, or
    areas like the so-called Valley of Tears, which are unrecognisable today. They
    can see people going bathing and in the same image animals or cars being washed,
    ice being taken out of the river during the winter to be used for cooling the
    food in the summer, sheep grazing on what is today Plevnei Road, or horses
    being shod. These are photographs shown for the first time, commissioned by the
    City Hall, and depicting the outskirts. (CM, AMP)

  • Mammalia, a surrealist drama directed by Sebastian Mihăilescu

    Mammalia, a surrealist drama directed by Sebastian Mihăilescu

    The surrealist drama Mammalia, directed by Sebastian Mihăilescu, had its world premiere in the Forum section of the 73rd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival and has recently entered cinema halls across Romania. The film was screened for the first time in Romania in Cluj-Napoca as part of the Transylvania International Film Festival – TIFF. The film was also selected at the Uruguay Film Festival and was included in the SMART7 Competition, an itinerant program that highlights innovative voices and which is founded by seven prestigious festivals. Mammalia was also shown at Kino Pavasaris in Vilnius (Lithuania) and IndieLisboa (Portugal). Mammalia (a Romania-Germany-Poland coproduction) is a surreal journey through the crisis of masculinity, written by Sebastian Mihăilescu and Andrei Epure, and it combines drama with mystery and comedy.



    Sebastian Mihăilescu spoke at RRI about how he came to make a film, about the type of filmmaking in Mammalia, about the SMART7 competition and the international trajectory of the film: In terms of approach, I tried to get closer to a poetic cinema. A poetic cinema that makes full use of the cinema means, obviously, such as editing, time, light, and for this reason I also assumed the film as an analog medium. I probably chose this approach also because I’m afraid of time. It’s all about my struggle with time, my fear of time, things that I also shared during the Q & A sessions. Regarding SMART7, it’s the first time that a Romanian film is selected in this circuit. This month the film will also have two screenings in Reykjavík, I will definitely attend one of them, and it will also be screened in Thessaloniki. Returning to the discussion about time, for me, cinema is my second career, which I started at 27. Before starting filmmaking, I was an IT engineer. This year I turned 40 and I think this is a turning point for any human being. I was not really happy with my IT career at the time, that’s why I abandoned it. Initially I wanted to be a painter, but I didn’t have the courage, then I wanted to be an architect, again I didn’t have the courage. That’s how I ended up at the Polytechnic University, but at the same time I studied design, I continued to paint and do street art. But the wish to express myself through art was always there, it remained there, I tried to express myself somehow, and somehow the film connected all these skills, namely my passion for writing, my passion for painting, image and photography.



    In Mammalia, István Téglás plays Camil, a 39-year-old man who embarks on an oneiric journey where the mundane and the fantastic intertwine. Having lost control over his work, his social status and his love relationship, Camil embarks on a quest that makes him question his identity and his masculinity. As he follows his partner, he ends up in a bizarre community with disturbing rituals, where he eventually experiences a tragicomic reversal of roles.



    István Téglás admits that the role of Camil was one of the most demanding in his entire career: It was very difficult for me, and I often got anxious. This way of working on a film, when you never know what’s going to happen the next day, obviously creates all kinds of moods for you. Moreover, after several days of work you start getting tired, given that you have many shooting sessions a day, sometimes from five in the morning, for example. But I tried to focus, I tried to be present, that was the most important thing, and I think I succeeded. Indeed, it was a very demanding and physical role, and I say this even though I am used to this kind of work, I have played demanding roles in theater shows as well. So I was trained, prepared in that sense, but there were quite a few challenges. For example, I had to go into the water at the end of October, when it was cold outside. In these conditions, the diving suit helps you up to a point, but beyond that, all you need is to be resilient. Mammalia is a film where the director gave me freedom, but he also gave me a kind of direction, because the situations I had to perform were clear. So I didn’t feel lost for a second.



    István Téglás also talked about the collaboration he had on Mammalia with non-professional actors: In general, I like to work with people who don’t have a degree in acting because it seems to me that they have a much greater openness than professional actors. I knew this, I wanted to work with amateur actors, this has actually happened. We got along very well and, in a way, in those moments, I let them lead me more, instead of me leading them. And I enjoyed doing that, although generally, as an actor, it’s not easy to do that. Because you want or are tempted, most of the time, to lead the whole play. But the Mammalia experience was a happy case.



    Besides István Téglás, the cast of the movie Mammalia includes Mălina Manovici, Denisa Nicolae, Steliana Bălăcianu, Rolando Matsangos, Mirela Crețan, Andreea Gheorghe, Mircea Bujoreanu, Marian Pîrvu, Dan Zarug Mihai and Elena Chingălată. (LS)

  • “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife,” a documentary road movie by Alexandru Solomon

    “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife,” a documentary road movie by Alexandru Solomon


    The feature film “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife,” a documentary road movie written and directed by Alexandru Solomon and inspired by the life of the monk Arsenie Boca and the cult created around him, has recently reached Romanian cinema halls.



    The film premiered at the 57th Karlovy Vary Festivals “Proxima” competition and will also be part of the national selection of the Astra Film Festival between October 15 and 22.



    Screened in several cities in Romania, the film has already generated heated debates and controversies. Two public institutions cancelled the screening of Alexandru Solomons work, and the Sibiu Archbishopric called on the organisers of Astra Film Festival to ban the screening of the documentary. Astra Film Festivals organisers replied, “A documentary has the unique capacity to bring to the forefront peoples actual problems and debates, to invite the public to look at a topic from several different perspectives. A documentary carries the imprint of the values shared by its producers, and it often touches on highly sensitive topics, to which the public may respond very differently. And this is a gain. We all want an open society, with people who are free in all respects.”



    Alexandru Solomons documentary follows Arsenie Boca, the monk persecuted by the communist regime, in a staged pilgrimage. The pilgrims and the director retrace the miracles allegedly performed by Arsenie Boca, discuss them and take turns making confessions. Through the eyes of the believers scrutinised by a sceptical director, the film actually depicts how the Romanian society reflects in the image of this human about to be canonised.



    Alexandru Solomon. “I think the Arsenie Boca phenomenon is quite relevant for how the Romanian society works at present. This is a phenomenon, a construct that has taken shape under our eyes over the past 30 years. And what is interesting is that few monks or saints have had such a reach, such popularity in the 21st Century. Im talking here about this cult that has grown steadily since Arsenie Bocas death in 1989. This has been the direction of my effort, as I have already said the film is not and is not intended to be a biography of Arsenie Boca, even though it retraces some scenes from his life. This is in fact why I resorted to this formula which is somehow borderline fiction, because this cult is a series of layers of fiction, of legend built upon true facts. And ultimately one can no longer distinguish between what is invented and what is historical fact. I was interested in this way of fictionalising a real person and in how, at the end of the day, legend becomes more powerful than history.”



    Alexandru Solomon believes the legend of father Arsenie Boca fills a void created in many Romanians by the disenchantment of the past decades. As the director puts it, it is a film about how “the Romanian society reflects in this cult, in this construct of a very popular character, which offers hope and comfort during these times.”



    Alexandru Solomon: “What I tried to understand, beyond the influence of the Orthodox Church on all our lives, was the popular foundation of this type of cult, of this kind of thinking, a kind of magical thinking after all, which breaks with Europes rationalist tradition. And its not a local, Romanian occurrence alone. If you look around the world, there is a resurgence of magical thinking, from the conspiracy theories in America, to Turkey, Poland and elsewhere. As for Romania, I believe very broad categories of people have an acute sense of social abandonment, and they find hope and comfort in this area, in religion. And the confusion I speak about at the end of the film has to do with my conclusion that, no matter how one compares legends with historical fact, magical thinking with reason, there is a barrier between them, a wall that cannot be overcome. People will listen to rational explanations, they will read about the facts, but this will not change their beliefs in the least. This is something I understood by making this film and I respect peoples faith, this is something you cannot touch. I believe it is their right and as long as it helps them, everything is good, but a problem that the film tackles is what happens when this faith is manipulated. When this faith is used for commercial, financial and even political purposes, and when it becomes a rule imposed on others as well, some tenet one has to observe.”



    Alexandru Solomon, a director and director of photography, is known for documentaries such as “The Great Communist Bank Robbery” (2004), “Cold Waves” (2007), “Kapitalism – Our Improved Formula” (2010), “Romania: Four Countries” (2015), and “Tarzans Testicles” (2017). Since 2010, Alexandru Solomon has been teaching at the National Arts University UNArte, and he is also the president of One World Romania Association. In 2016, he published a monograph entitled “Representations of Memory in Documentary Cinema.” (AMP)


  • Romania’s first large-scale exhibition dedicated to Constantin Brancusi

    Romania’s first large-scale exhibition dedicated to Constantin Brancusi


    Timisoara is the European Capital of Culture in 2023. As part of the program titled Timisoara 2023: European Capital of Culture, in late 2023 and early into 2024, Romanias and Eastern-Europes most important exhibition-event in the past 50 years will be mounted, dedicated to Constantin Brancusi. The exhibition is titled Brancusi: Romanian sources and universal perspectives.



    Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) was a Romanian sculptor with a groundbreaking contribution to the renewal of the fine arts language and perspective in contemporary universal sculpture. Brancusi was a true icon, being also dubbed the father of modern sculpture. Brancusi began his artistic career in Romania. Then, in 1903, he continued his artistic activity in Paris, with his maturity works being created in France.



    In Bucharest in early September, in the main building of The National Bank of Romania, the press conference was held, whereby the details were presented to the audience, of the event-exhibition in Timisoara.



    We sat down and spoke to Ovidiu Sandor, the President of the Art Encounters Foundation and the Commissioner of the exhibition dedicated to Brancusi. Here is Ovidiu Sandor himself, telling us what the exhibition represents for the visitors:



    “I think the exhibition is important in various respects. It is Romanias first exhibition in 50 years, dedicated to Brancusi. I believe this symbolic return of Brancusi to his native country is somehow important, if we also consider the context of what happens around us and, in the difficult moments like the ones weve been going through, returning to these landmarks of ours, of the Romanians, of Romanian culture, returning to Brancusi, I believe that is something important. It is an exhibition we have once in a generation. It is an opportunity for everybody see Brancusi in his younger years, but also his maturity works, the works that made him famous. A special introduction, in a curatorial discourse offered by Doina Lemny, presenting, in a balanced way, the entire Romanian influence Brancusi carries with him, in great proportion, when he sets off to Paris, but also the whole process of transformation and refining, in the buildup to Brancusis works, and their universal importance.”



    Ovidiu Șandor also spoke about the works that are on display as part of the exhibition:



    ” …we all think we know Brancusi, yet it is important for us to see his works for real, to immerse in this Brancusi universe the exhibition proposes, with the more than 100 works on display, where we have the chance to see his various preoccupations: sculpture, drawing, presented in their relationship with Romania, but also in connection with what ties Brancusi to his native country, but also with that relevance in universal fine arts Brancusi accomplished. We will bring an important set of sculptures. There are more than 20 sculptures. There will be his iconic sculptures, “Măiastra”, “Bird in Space” “Mademoiselle Pogany”, “The Kiss” and suchlike, but also less well-known sculptures, such as “Terminal Border”, a work Brancusi created in 1945, when Romania lost Bessarabia, and, concurrently, we will also have segments of his work that are less well-known, such as photography, drawing, of course, since drawing is important for any sculptor, documents revealing the way he maintained contact with certain people at home. Film, a film made by Brancusi, film made by other relevant artists featuring Brancusi. So it is a presentation, even if it does not seek to be a retrospective in scope, it is an exhibition which, synthetically, succeeds to present the complexity of his works and the various preoccupations he had as an artist and, of course, beyond that, Brancusi the man bubbles beneath the surface. Yet apart from the exhibition we are preparing an important catalogue, a very serious publication, also coordinated by Doina Lemny, including 16 new contributions on Brancusi, besides, also worth mentioning could be the fact that it is the first Brancusi exhibition where Brancusi is placed in the Romanian context. “



    Here is what the curator of the exhibition and one of the leading international experts on Constantin Brancusis art, Doina Lemny, told us:



    “It is a symbolic return, and I say that every time, a symbolic return of Brancusi to his native country which he never left, in his psyche. Brancusi was the same person who was attached to his country, yet he developed in France. If we try to judge him, why he gave the studio, the old story, why he offered France his studio, that happened because there, for fifty years, he created all his masterpieces. Yet he knew all too well his early works were at home, that is those of the Museum in Craiova and the National Art Museum in Bucharest. “



    Doina Lemny went on to give us detailed info on the origin of the works included in the exhibition titled Brancusi: Romanian sources and universal perspectives.



    “The two museums, we considered two museums alone, two museums and the Foundation in Venice, being already confined by the area offered by the museum in Timisoara, which is not a very generous one. There are very few rooms, exhibitions halls, 11, and the sculptures cannot be crammed or heaped up so you can present them all in one go, because otherwise they are not visible, they kill each other. So we made an appeal to two museums, to the generosity of two great museums, Tate Gallery, which lent three of the four works they have, and we need to praise that, and the Pompidou Centre which, through Brancusis Studio, owns the worlds greatest collection of works. We did not approach the American museums for space-related reasons, as I said, and also for financial reasons. “



    Here is Doina Lemny once again, this time telling us what, in her opinion, Brancusi the artist meant:



    “Brancusi means a man I need to question permanently, and that because he keeps his mystery. The more I advance, the greater the number of the questions I ask myself about this man who knew how to analyze every moment in life and how to render it, since he rendered shapes but he did nor render the being, he did not reproduce, he reproduced an idea instead yet he did not reproduce a character. For me, Brancusi remains a mystery and no, maybe I do not have that urge to grasp his mystery completely. Actually, he himself used to say:” Do not ask the creators, besides, the veil doesnt have to be revealed, lifted completely. “




  • Nightpractice, the recipient of the Best Romanian short film Award as part of the ANONIMUL 2023

    Nightpractice, the recipient of the Best Romanian short film Award as part of the ANONIMUL 2023

    The Audience award for the Best Short film as part of
    the ANONIMUL 2023 International Independent Film Festival went to Nightpractice,
    a production by Bogdan Alecsandru. Initially, more than 100 films were entered the
    short film competition. For the final competition, film critic Ionut Mares selected
    12 productions, most of which being signed by well-established names in the
    Romanian filmmaking industry. The production by Bogdan Alecsandru was also shortlisted
    for the Romanian Film Days competition as part of TIFF (Transylvania International
    Film Festival) with the selection including some of the best Romanian recent
    films.


    Bogdan Alecsandru has recently earned his Master’s in Film
    directing with the I.L Caragiale National Film and Drama University in Bucharest.
    He participated for the second time around in the Anonimul’s short film
    competition. In 2022 he was in Sfântu Gheorghe, the locality hosting the
    festival each year, with his first short film, Our House.


    We sat down and spoke
    to Bogdan Alecsandru about the topic of his film and about the reactions of the
    audience of Anonimul.


    I have
    taken part in Anonimul for the 2nd year in a row, in the short film
    competition, and it is also the 2nd year when the festival as such
    is very special and very specific. I met people who booked their tickets months
    in advance, so they can take part in the festival, whose venue we all know is in
    a rather isolated place. There isn’t very much to do in Sfântu Gheorghe and it
    is extraordinary, people gathering there to watch movies, hence the very special
    atmosphere. I also turned up with my film and I was so happy I got there. For
    me, it is very important to get in touch with the audience we have, a very
    special and extremely dedicated audience. Actually, this award, the audience’s
    award goes to the young filmmakers through voting, physically, as well as
    online, and, for me, that is a formative experience, I daresay. As part of the
    festival, every short
    film enjoys two screenings. One of them also has a Q & A section and that is
    actually the only time when you sit before your audience and have a direct
    interaction with them. The reactions seemed quite enthusiastic, to me, and I
    was happy about it as I wanted to make a short film meant to be quite audience-friendly,
    with horror- like elements, even with thriller elements, I daresay, in the most
    common acceptance of the word. That is why I expected my film to enjoy
    appreciation, yet I did not expect this award. Because, even if it is rather a pop
    film, rather audience-oriented, it has nonetheless a quite sensitive topic, for
    Romania, the relation between two people of the same sex.


    Bogdan Alecsandru expressed
    his interest mainly in queer cinema, which in Romania can still be viewed as
    some sort of niche cinema. Besides, he takes his time to make his debut with a
    feature film as, for the time being, he is passionate about the short genre which
    he considers he did not explore enough.


    In Romania,
    queer cinema is rather scarcely represented, we’re speaking about films telling
    stories focusing on same-sex relations. Notwithstanding, this kind of cinema had
    been tackled before, yet the first Romanian queer film had a tardier release,
    in 2006, when Tudor Giurgiu made Love Sick. I believe there are very many
    stories of this kind, untold, or which did not enjoy the opportunity of being
    told, until recently, and I am interested to make the topic known to the audiences,
    to that effect. Right now I am interested in this area of the short film, which
    can definitely be viewed as an exercise or as some sort of practice. Yet I view the short film as a
    genre n itself, a very precious one, so in the coming years, at least, I intend
    to explore its specificity. Which means I avoid making short films that rather look
    like a beginning or a demo for a feature film. And that, for the time being, at
    least. Later on, I do not know what I will do as I am still quite young and I
    change my focus rather fast. Now, speaking about Romanian cinema, it seems to
    be it has seen auspicious moments for some time now and, when at Anonimul, I
    was really happy to find myself included in a selection mostly made of women
    filmmakers. Many of those women filmmakers are friends of mine and I am happy
    for their career. I also find it a good thing, the fact that commercial films
    are on the rise, the fact that this is a growing phenomenon. What I have in mind
    are such films as Teambuilding, whose box office in theatres was rather high, which
    doesn’t happen very often in the case of Romanian movies. I find that a good
    thing also because this genre could change Romanians’ perspective on Romanian
    cinema a little bit, but, obviously, that
    is a good thing also from a commercial perspective. I think a functional
    filmmaking industry should have both film genres, the art and the commercial
    films .


    On the cast for Nightpractice
    are Andrei Giurgea, Tiberius Zavelea, Gabriel Spahiu, Marc Titieni, Rareș
    Ularu, Horațiu Băcilă, Vlad Tudoran, Robi Brage, Antonio-Daniel Petrica.











  • Saviana Stănescu, ‘For a barbarian woman’

    Saviana Stănescu, ‘For a barbarian woman’

    A new volume of theater plays signed by Saviana Stănescu, “For a barbarian woman”, recently appeared at the Tracus Arte publishing house and was launched at the Cărturești Verona bookstore in Bucharest. At the launch of the volume – translated from English, with an introductory study by Diana Benea – the director of the National Museum of Romanian Literature, Ioan Cristescu, theater critic Oana Cristea Grigorescu and director Andrei Măjeri took the floor. Actress Adelaida Zamfira (who played in Saviana Stănescus first show, “Did you know that trains tell stories with children?”) read some monologues from the book.




    “In the last twenty years, Saviana Stănescu has become an emblematic figure of American dramaturgy, an exponent of the intersection between East and West, between different cultures and theatrical traditions, between Eastern European absurdity and carnivalesque, and American psychological realism. If the authors entire activity can be contained in the metaphor of the bridges she generously builds between continents, cultures, languages and artists from various spaces, then the current edition hopes to strengthen such a bridge towards the Romanian public, through a selection of recent plays, edited and published mainly in the last decade.”




    This is what Diana Benea writes in the introductory study of the volume “For a barbarian woman”. Saviana Stănescu won the UNITER award for the Best Play of the Year in 2000. Her first plays in Romanian (Infanta. Means of Use; Countdown) were staged by directors Radu Afrim, Theo Herghelegiu, Anca Maria Colțeanu, and Tudor Țepeneag. On the occasion of the launch in Romania of her new volume of theater plays, Saviana Stănescu spoke about the pendulum between the two spaces, the Romanian and the American, and about the transition from a literature marked by Eastern European realities to a global writing.


    “These bridges between the two cultures, this In-betweenness, this experience between two worlds, between two continents, between two languages, and between many other Betweens have left a mark on me lately. Therefore, the way I write tries to capture this swing between identities, cultures and continents. I joke there in America, saying that I have been an American writer for 22 years, because I came to America in 2001 and started from scratch. Thats when I started writing in English. So, in a way, Im only 22 years old as an American writer goes. Sure, I have many more years as a Romanian writer and playwright, but it was important for me to reinvent myself, to start from scratch. As said here at the launch event, I have a curiosity that is kept alive, every day I am interested to see what is happening in the world. Maybe it comes from my journalistic background, maybe it comes from the fact that Ive always liked to explore different subjects. I have always been interested in various fields, from mathematics to literature, from information technology to dance. And for me, all of this is found in the way I try to write theater. I am a curious person by nature, it seems important for me to capture these realities of the day in a play. I think its important to create a dramatic situation, to create a story.”




    If in her early days, when she wrote plays in Romanian, Saviana Stănescu was mainly interested in the area of the absurd, but since she arrived in the USA, her texts have acquired a wide socio-political resonance. Saviana Stanescu.


    “When I arrived in the United States, I encountered a reality of the emigrant. It was hard for me. It was hard for me to start from scratch, it was hard for me to be different, to see that I am not recognized, that I am not considered on the same level as the writers there. So I started again from scratch, I tried to show what I can do, I tried to learn from others. Somehow, this new reality I encountered made me understand that in Romania I was spoiled. In Romania, I allowed myself to explore the zone of the absurd, to escape into various worlds. In America I ran into financial difficulties, I had to face a tougher world, especially in New York. As I said, I started from scratch. I became a student, although in Romania I was a recognized writer. There is something powerful about starting all over again. As Diana Benea writes in the preface of the volume For a Barbarian Woman, we also went through some important socio-political moments. And in America, another theme was added to my writing: power relations between countries. Because I realized that it is a different power ratio, we cannot compare the perception of the USA with the perception of Romania. And I realized that I am in another world, a world of power, a world of economic domination, a world with problems of racial and gender discrimination, a world with different economic problems than those in Romania. I had to adapt, I had to get into a different kind of rhythm. Naturally, these new realities appeared in my plays. Being an empath, if I live in a place for a while, I will write a play that reflects the problems of that place and the environment there, hoping that my text will also speak on a larger level, resonate globally.”




    Currently, Saviana Stănescu is a university professor of dramatic writing and contemporary theater at Ithaca College, after teaching for 8 years at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts.