Over a single night, in 8 locations of our capital city, almost 40 fiction and documentary films will be screened, feature films and shorts. The White Night of the Romanian Film will be held at the Farmer Museum Cinema, Cinema Elvire Popesco, Cinematheque Eforie, Cinema Gloria, J’ai Bistrot, Deschis Gastrobar, Unteatru and at Grădina cu Filme.
The documentary
Planeta Petrila / Petrila Planet, directed by
Andrei Dăscălescu, talks about a condemned world (the mining town in Valea
Jiului), an artist (Ion Barbu) who stubbornly fights the authorities and a miner (Cătălin Cenușă) who struggles to keep the town alive. The emotional story was premiered in Amsterdam and won this year the Cinepub Audience Award at Transilvania International Film Festival.
Photographer Cosmin Bumbuț made his debut, alongside journalist Elena Stancu, in directing with
Ultimul căldărar / The Last Cauldron Maker, the story of a Roma family forced to emigrate when they cannot support themselves from their traditional trade. The documentary was premiered at Docuart Fest where it took home the Best Cinematography Award despite the fact that it is a low budget production – only a camera (for taking photos), and two other cameras (for filming).
Camera obscură / Dark Chamber digs up films made in Cineclubs during the communist era, some of them true subversive masterpieces: „The most important Cineclub of those years was CFR Timișoara Cineclub, located near the Regional railways. The films made here were not usually in compliance with the ideological ”line” so necessary for surviving in any cultural area. They were small cinema jewels, provocative and insolent to the
common sense, highly creative and somehow hope-inspiring. They gave hope that one day freedom, a word so abstract in those times, would be possible someday,” director
Gheorghe Preda said.
The Romanian village and its shortcomings are put under a magnifying glass, in the typical local narrative style „grin and beat it”, in the documentary
Varză, cartofi și alți demoni / Cabbage, Potatoes and Other Demons (directed by Șerban Georgescu). The film tells, from the inside, the struggle of a village to get out a vicious circle that renders no one a winner: 1 village, 1,000 tractors, 100,000 tons of cabbage. Profit? Zero. The director personally documented the story for a year, during which he worked the field together with the villagers. This entire experience, as well as the potential solutions identified within the community are told over 60 minutes of genuine satire.
Using photographs from Costică Acsinte collection, documentary
Țara moartă / The Dead Nation presents the period between 1937 to the years immediately following August 1944, in what director
Radu Jude calls „fragments of parallel lives”. The documentary, showing a Romania full of contrasts during the Second World War, got numerous good reviews by international press and was part of the official selection of Locarno Film Festival.
The full programme is to be announced soon. Admission will be free of charge to all screenings.
Details at:
www.romfilmpromotion.ro //
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