The fifth edition of Mediaș Central European Film Festival (MECEFF) was held during the first week of September, 2015. The 5-day Festival, promoted by Radu Gabrea, Chairman of MECEFF, and by VictoriaCociaș, General Manager, unfolds several cultural programs. First of all, there is the competitional section gathering together films with the most awards won, from Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The selection criterion is simple: each country is invited to propose its best movie from the previous year. Romania was represented by Quod Erat Demonstrandum, directed by Andrei Gruzsniczki. It was a complicated business to attract a lot of public from outside Mediaș given that all movies were already screened in the cinema-theatre circuit, but, considering the city has only one cinema theatre – temporarily closed for renovations – it was clear there was a local public whose access to cinema was obviously restricted. Four screening sites were set up: the Mediensis cinema theatre (reopened temporarily for the MECEFF), the Traube Hall(within the Traube Hotel), the Synagogue (where classical movies in Yiddish were screened), and an outdoor cinema set up in the Central Market of the city.
One of the most important programs of the Festival, developed by Radu Gabrea, was the Selection of the President, including a retrospective of the work of a Romanian director – this year was Mircea Veroiu, and last year was AlexandruTatos. RaduGabreawas also the one who chose thematic films, respectively Great Films about the Great War. This section included 25 titles, productions from different countries. Apart from the above, at each edition of the Festival a country is invited to propose several films from their own cinematography, and this year was the French cinematography's turn. My favourites from France's list were La grande illusion (directed by Jean Renoir) and Flandres (directed by Bruno Dumonot) – I could not get to their screening because they were overlapping with other films I had not seen, but I was glad they were being brought to an audience who would have found it hard to view them otherwise (especially the Dumont film). The Festival was conceived as dedicated directly to thepublic inMediaș, as a sort of an educational platform – as all thematic retrospective usually play this role. An additional program was represented by the Session of Colloquies on the First World War, delivered by Alexandre Sumpf, Lucian Boia, Adrian Majuru and Bianca Pârvulescu.
A novel project initiated by MECEFF this year was the Read & Screen, more precisely the screening of First World War images (letters, newspaper clips, promotional material, photos etc.) doubled by the reading of a theme fragment. The readings were given by Victoria Cociaș, Vlad Rădescu, Marcel Iureș, Ion Caramitru, Constantin Cotimanis and ClaudiuBleonț. In a short interview, Victoria Cociaș told the AaRC team about how this concept was created and how the texts and images were selected. As they do every year, the festival organizers invited the guests to a hike around the city of Mediaș. A first destination was the Jidvei Castle, functioning as a restaurant and opened also for wine tasting.The actress and poet Ioana Crăciunescu acted as host in Ațel village, where the guests visited the reformed church and the church house in charge with local churches' restauration and promotion of various cultural events.
MECEFF 7+1 is organized with the support of the Mediaș Town Hall and of ADI – Târnavelor Valley, and many volunteers are present on each occasion. The city was full of young people wearing name tags and very eager to help. Teddy Necula has been present to each edition of the Festival. He starred in Noro, a film by RaduGabrea, and presently is directing documentary films. He is also the one in charge with the Festival's media coverage.
The Festival ended on September 5th with the Awards Gala hosted by the actors Constantin Cotimanis and Victoria Cociaș. The awards and the motivations thereof were presented by the Chairmen of the Jury, Wolfgang Ruf (German writer and lecturer). The other members of the jury were: Anca Mitran (Professor, former Manager of the National Film Archives, currently General Manager of the National Centre of Cinematography), James Ulmer (American journalist), Costel Safirman (Romanian critic and historian, currently living in Israel) and Călin Stănculescu (film critic and historian). James Ulmer stated he was impressed with the city, the festival and the movies he saw.
The best film award and the best cinematography award were won by The City of Dogs (Fehéristen, directed by Kornél Mundruczó, 2014), and the best director award and the best actor award went to Lukasz Palkowski, respectively to Tomasz Kot, for the Polish movie The Gods (Bogowie, directed by Łukasz Palkowski, 2014). The audience award went to the Austria-Germany western that opened the Festival – The Valley of Darkness(Das Finstere Tal, directed by Andreas Prochaska, 2014).
A retrospective of the MECEFF's fifth editionis to be held at the Bucharest Municipality Museum (Șuțu Palace), during September 24th – 27th, as we were told by Alina Mușat, the Festival's coordinator.
Imagine: Dan Țuculescu
The 5-day Festival, promoted by Radu Gabrea, Chairman of MECEFF, and by Victoria Cociaș, General Manager, unfolds several cultural programs. First of all, there is the competitional section gathering together films with the most awards won, from Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The selection criterion is simple: each country is invited to propose its best movie from the previous year. Romania was represented by Quod Erat Demonstrandum, directed by Andrei Gruzsniczki.
It was a complicated business to attract a lot of public from outside Mediaș given that all movies were already screened in the cinema-theatre circuit, but, considering the city has only one cinema theatre – temporarily closed for renovations – it was clear there was a local public whose access to cinema was obviously restricted. Four screening sites were set up: the Mediensis cinema theatre (reopened temporarily for the MECEFF), the Traube Hall(within the Traube Hotel), the Synagogue (where classical movies in Yiddish were screened), and an outdoor cinema set up in the Central Market of the city.
The Festival was conceived as dedicated directly to thepublic inMediaș, as a sort of an educational platform – as all thematic retrospective usually play this role. An additional program was represented by the Session of Colloquies on the First World War, delivered by Alexandre Sumpf, Lucian Boia, Adrian Majuru and Bianca Pârvulescu.
MeCEFF 7+1 2015
