Dan Piţa

Director, Screenwriter
Born: 11.10.1938 in Dorohoi (Botoșani)

Born in 1938 in Dorohoi, he took medical training and afterwards he enrolled with the Theatre and Cinema Institute, majoring in film directing, where he was colleagues with Mircea Veroiu. After his graduation – in 1969, his graduation diploma project being Viaţa în roz (Life in Pink) – the names of the two friends were always associated with one another.

They made their debut together with two films that remained true landmarks in the filmography of the '70s generation: Nunta de piatră (The Stone Wedding) and Duhul aurului (Lust for Gold). During the '70–'80, they both worked intensely (until Veroiu immigrated in France), as if they were in competition with each other: when Piţa premiered a new movie, Veroiu launched one of his own right away (and vice-versa). They signed alternatively the western trilogy on the Transylvanian people emigrated in America. After 1989, when Veroiu returned from France, Piţa produced his films at his production company – „Solaris”.
Beyond this friendship/ partnership, Dan Piţa's career stands as a model of professionalism as regards working with actors (he enjoys discovering new faces, most fit for a certain part), and also as regards image and editing. He tackled various genres, from present-day films to époque movies in costumes, and from action movies to metaphorical and allegorical stories.
After '90, he has continued to be present on the big screen, but he somehow lost himself in hard-to-grasp cinema discourses that have not always been inspired ones.

Trivia

The film Nunta de piatră (The Stone Wedding) ranks 6th in the ”Top 10 Best Romanian Movies of All Time”, published in 2008 and ranked by 40 film reviewers.
He was married to actress Carmen Galin.
He was in a long-term romantic relation with actress Irina Movilă.
He took sanitary training prior to his directing studies.
He was good friends with director Alexandru Tatos, whom he convinced to take the entrance exam at the Theatre and Film Academy.
Before 1989, he worked mainly with Filmmaking House Four, his delegated producer being usually Villy Auerbach.
In 1991, he set up his own production company „Solaris”, together with Villy Auerbach and Andrei Blaier.
He has always liked to work with mostly the same crew, the following being never absent from his productions: composer Adrian Enescu, editor Cristina Ionescu and sound engineer Sotir Caragaţă.
One of his favourite actors is Ştefan Iordache: Bietul Ioanide, Pruncul, petrolul şi ardelenii, Concurs, Noiembrie, ultimul bal, Eu sunt Adam, Omul zilei.

Dan Pița about...
...actors: „I've said many times I like working with actors, regardless of the generation they are part of. I have a great deal of love and respect for actors. I try to cast the mature ones in „contre-emploi” parts and thus remove the label put by others, and I also try to discover the young ones, to mobilise them and „throw them to the wolves”. To facilitate the debut of young actors is a normal, natural thing. Anyway, a film with young people and about young people implies assuming the responsibility to make possible the debut of deserving ones and – I say this with joy – we have a lot of them to choose from! Our acting school is very good, so it would be natural for 10–12 actors to make a successful debut each year. The problem is how they evolve into their second or third film. And, especially, how you can change the „means” of expression, stuck-in-the-mud, of an established actor. I do not like the actors who always play themselves, though I understand that sometime they have no other option. If they are not incited to compose a new character all the time, they are prone to become their own persona. Some of them can get out of this, some of them don't”.

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