Category: World of Culture

To the North, the debut feature film of director Mihai Mincan, which received the Bisato d’Oro Film Critics Award at the 79th edition of the Venice International Film Festival in the Venice Orizzonti section , dedicated to films that launch new aesthetic and expressive trends in cinema, has been recently released in Romania. The film also won the Audience Award at the Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest festival, which reached its 13th edition last year. Seen as a psychological thriller, To the North, represents one of the most ambitious productions of Romanian cinema in recent years. The project is a co-production of five countries: Romania (deFilm), France (Remora Film), Greece (Studio Bauhaus), Bulgaria (Screening Emotions) and the Czech Republic (Background Films). The action is set in the year 1996 and takes place on a cargo carrier crossing the Atlantic Ocean, on its way to America. On that ship, Joel, a faithful Filipino sailor discovers a Romanian passenger who boarded illegally. Knowing that the young man is at risk of being thrown overboard if discovered by the captain or officers, Joel tries to save him. The film’s script, written by Mihai Mincan in 2016, is inspired by a real event that happened in the 1990s, when some Romanians tried to reach America hidden in a cargo carrier.

Mihai Mincan: Although I wrote the script 20 years later, that incident told me a lot about the world I was living in, about that moment. It seemed that even though 20 years had passed between the events, the world had actually changed very, very little. I was less interested in the topic of migration. Instead, I was interested in notions like Fear, the Unknown, especially the Unknown, which can take on the appearance of another human. I was also interested in understanding the situation in which the respective characters find themselves, having to put their lives in the hands of an unknown person. Those were the notions, the catalyzing questions for me, the ones I had in mind when I started writing the script. Because, starting from that real fact of 1996, it seemed to me that, in fact, I am talking quite a lot about 2016, a year with many terror attacks. In 2016 there were terror attacks in Brussels, then there was an attack in Nice. A lot of people died that year because of terror attacks caused primarily by religious differences. At that moment I felt that the world around me was almost on the verge of collapse.

A bold and unflinching depiction of the situations that can occur in international waters. A story about moral choices, kindness and compromise, courage and fear. A story that gets you thinking even after the end credits, the publication Intoscreens wrote about the film.

Mihai Mincan: This moral relativity that we practice in relation to other people is difficult, and the cultural differences among the characters in the film make it even more difficult. These differences between the characters, their very different social and cultural backgrounds interested me a lot when I started writing the script. Each of us brings into a relationship something different, but at the same time there is always the chance that these differences meet halfway, in concepts like poverty, for example. For the characters in the film, poverty was a common concept, but it was also perceived and understood differently, depending on each culture. I was also very attracted to these differences in language, that prevented people from communicating at a time when communication was vital. I think that if the characters could really talk to each other, speak more clearly about their needs, the situation could have been different. I am not a moral relativist, but I do not agree with the idea that Good and Evil are very vague, that they differ greatly from person to person. However, in the film, the situation makes everything very complicated, the stakes of each character being extremely high.

A very talented team worked on the production: director of photography George Chiper, sound designer Nicolas Becker, sound Mixer Cyril Holtz, music Marius Leftărache, Alesandro Cortini, Nicolas Becker, editing Dragos Apetri. The cast of the film is international, consisting of actors from the Philippines, Taiwan, France, Bulgaria. The main roles are played by the young German-Romanian actor Niko Becker and by Soliman Cruz, a well-known Filipino actor. The dialogues are in six languages: English, Tagalog, Spanish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Mandarin. (EE)

Romanias most successful contemporary playwright, Matei Vișniec, was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa at a festivity to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of Bucharests National University for Theater and Film. Previously, in 2018, he had been awarded the title of Officer of Arts and Letters in France. On receiving the honorary degree, Vișniec spoke about the prospects of independent artists and the need for a national strategy to help the independent artistic sector. He also paid tribute to theater critic George Banu, who passed away this year. Last but not least, Vișniec spoke about his relationship with the two countries where he has lived and worked, Romania and France.

A poet, playwright, novelist and journalist, Matei Vişniec was born on 29th January 1956 in Rădăuţi, in northern Romania. His first published work was poetry, which appeared in Luceafărul magazine in 1972. He went on to produce seven books of poetry, seven novels, a book of short stories and more than 50 plays. He has been living in France in 1987, where he works as a journalist for Radio France Internationale. After the fall of communism in Romania in 1989, Vişniec started travelling frequently between France and Romania, living between two cultures and two languages, between East and West. His plays have been translated into more than 30 languages and have been staged in more than 30 different countries. Hes even made it into the Dictionnaire des étrangers qui ont fait la France, a biographical dictionary of foreigners who made France. Heres what he had to say about this recognition:

“This dictionary is very interesting in that it shows the extent to which France can be seen as an area of cultural openness and as a great cultural power. It contains around 14,000 names, from the time of the French Revolution until today, so from 1793 until the present day. Its about the foreigners who came to France and made their contribution to its culture. Naturally, the Romanians played an extremely important role in this respect. They started arriving in France towards the end of the 19th century and made a name for themselves in various fields. Id like to recall one of these people, a name all but forgotten today. He was an actor who came from Iași, went to theater school and then became a great star of silent films and the review theater. His stage name was Edourd de Max. Another Romanian mentioned in the dictionary is the late theatre critic George Banu. He is considered a French theatrologist of Romanian origin because he wrote almost all of his work in French, although he did translate and publish it in Romanian, as well. The dictionary shows how significant the Romanian contribution was and Im happy to be included in this volume, having written around 30 plays in French, some of which were published by big publishing houses such as Actes Sud. My plays were staged hundreds of times by French independent theater companies and in the last 30 years, at least one production based on my plays has been selected for the Theater Festival in Avignon. At the same time, I have tried to create bridges, connections, between France and Romania, to give some of the things I see in France as a model for Romanians to get inspired from. For me, France was an opportunity. France gave me wings, and thats very important, but I never lost my roots. For it is in Romania that I grew as a young person, my artistic sensibility is that of a Romanian and East European writer, and as for poetry, I can only experience it profoundly in the Romanian language.

In 2016, Suceava opened a theater that bears the name of the great playwright. Here is Matei Visniec:

“I think it is the most recently created theater in Romania, using the local budget. Before this theater was created, seven years ago, there was a theater festival I created together with very enthusiastic people in Suceava. I created this festival 11 years ago, together with poet Carmen Veronica Steiciuc, who, unfortunately, is no longer with us, and also with the Rotary Club, and the Bucovina Association, with great quality people, very enthusiastic. With this festival, we managed to attract the local audience to the venue. They came for free, but very important shows, from all over the country, it was a large audience. This festival proved that Suceava needed a professional art theater, with actors who felt the pulse of the city and the local need for culture, actors who became local celebrities. Fortunately, now this theater exists. It is extraordinary that the ten actors who live and work in Suceava, at the Matei Visniec Municipal Theater, have put on at least four plays this year. At this moment, as I said, the theater has initiated several major projects.

In late March, the Caragiale National Theater in Bucharest is hosting a new show written by Matei Visniec called The Word Progress Uttered by Mother Sounds Terribly Phony. It is directed by Botond Nagy, one of the directors that has put on several plays based on Matei Visniec’s work at the theater that bears his name. One of them, The Return Home, a show about war and the absurdity of useless loss of life, produced by the Matei Visniec Theater in Suceava, was shortlisted for the National Theater Festival in 2022.

In the old center of the capital Bucharest, the Dacia-Romania Palace venued the 11th edition of the renowned Art Safari exhibition. The event offered the public, beyond the exhibitions opened in February 2023, several special events. Among them, the temporary exhibition Brukenthal Exclusive, where the public had the opportunity to admire some of the most valuable paintings in Romania, brought for a short period to Bucharest, from the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu (central Romania). Baron Samuel von Brukenthal (1721-1803) was a Saxon judge and the Habsburg governor of the Great principality of Transylvania. He was also a passionate art collector, as well as the founder of the museum that has been bearing his name since 1790.

Five world masterpieces from the Brukenthal Museum were displayed in Bucharest, namely the famous Portrait of a man with a blue chaperon by de Jan van Eyck (1390-1441), a Flemish painter of the late Middle Ages, considered a true innovator and having a decisive role in the history of European painting. According to legend, he was the artist who perfected oil painting. The other masterpieces are Portrait of a man reading and Portrait of a woman at prayer by Hans Memling (1435-1494); Ecce Homo by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1488-1576), the famous Italian painter of the Venetian school and the small portrait Head of a Child by the painter Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), an artist belonging of the late Renaissance.

The director of Art Safari, Ioana Ciocan, told us more about how this special exhibition: Alexandru Chituță was the curator of this exhibition, and he thought of an exhibition of masterpieces. This means that, out of the total of 1,200 paintings that belonged to Baron von Brukenthal, 50 are true world masterpieces, and of these 50, the ones exhibited in Bucharest are the most important. The works of these great artists can only be found at Brukenthal. These are Veronese, Titian, Van Eyck and Hans Memling. When I heard the proposal of the Brukenthal Museum, I was extremely honored and very surprised. The most valuable work in Romania, Portrait of a man with a blue chaperon by Van Eyck, was displayed inside the Dacia-Romania Palace, on Lipscani Street, in the center of Bucharest.

The insurance value of the works borrowed from the Brukenthal Museum was 75 million euros, an extremely large amount for Romania. How, then, were the works insured? Ioana Ciocan: “We were able to insure the masterpieces with the help of international brokers. The works are insured in Great Britain because the amount to be paid and the speed with which this project was done made it impossible to insure them on Romanian territory. We would have liked to have a Romanian insurer, though. With the secure transport, secured by gendarmes and CPI Security was a bit easier, because we were able to make the transport with Orbit Fine Art, which already has experience in transporting cultural goods of universal value, the Heritage category. So things were a little easier there.

The director of Art Safari made us a confession related to the recent designation of the Art Safari as a Strategic Project for Romania, by the Ministry of Culture. At the same time, Ioana Ciocan told us more about some of the projects that Art Safari is preparing: First of all, we are very honored by Minister Lucian Romașcanu’s decision to declare Art Safari a strategic project. We are, in fact, aware of all the responsibility that this honorary title carries and are already preparing exciting exhibitions for 2024 as well. The 2023 exhibition included, in addition to these Brukenthal masterpieces, an exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery and one from the prestigious Victoria and Albert Royal Museum. A Nicolae Grigorescu exhibition is next, between May 4 and 14. We have an exhibition of ‘Angels and Demons’, curated by ‘Victoria and Albert’, and specially made for Art Safari.

There is also the Artachino retrospective, curated by Elena Olariu, staged in partnership with the Bucharest Municipal Museum and the National Museum of Art. Of course, along with these two museums, there are our long-term partner museums – Constanța, Iasi, Cluj, Timișoara, Oradea, Satu-Mare . I don’t have time to list them all, although I would like to. They are also with us at every great retrospective that Elena Olariu stages. And, of course, the National Portrait Gallery has created an exhibition entitled ‘Love Stories’, especially for Art Safari, which included masterpieces by Van Dyck, but also by Angelika Kauffman or Man Ray. (EE)