Graduate of the
Jean Georgescu Film School (class of 1946). Starting 1948 she works at the Bucharest Film Studios first as an assistant director to Jean Georgescu (documentaries
The Oil (1948),
The Woods (1949) and
Victor Iliu (
În sat la noi / In Our Village, made in collaboration with the two directors, in 1950).
She is a second unit director to
Directorul nostru / Our Manager, directed by Jean Georgescu (1954). In 1957 she signs the screenplay of the screening of Petru Dumitriu’s novel,
Bijuterii de familie / Family Jewels. The thread of her career has a ten year sudden breach following accusations of “sabotage and counter-revolutionary unrest” resulting in a few months in jail. In 1967 she makes her debut as a full time film director with
Gioconda fără surâs /
Mona Lisa Without That Smile.
Malvina Ursianu about being a film director:
“These trade is not for women.What’s that a she - director? No. Director, that will do!”
The Critic’s Opinion:
“A total author par excellence, she declares that she assumes the risk of practicing a cinema of analysis and she chooses her plots according to her inner needs.Thus the films become a palimpsest of the Romanian soul, deciphered in a personal way, grave and full of pathos, a poetic adapted to the personal angle which, in the perspective of time, proved to be consequently objective: reporting the individual failure to the political conjuncture(
Gioconda fără surâs / Mona Lisa Without That Smile, 1968); showing the collapse of a world during a night to remember(
Serata / The Evening Party,1971); capturing the reverberations of a state of mind called longing (
Trecătoarele iubiri / Fleeting Loves,1974); reconsidering patriotism at the necessary civic violence hour (
Întoarcerea lui Vodă Lăpuşneanu / The Return of the Banished,1980); invoking the implacable dialectics cause-effect of the interference of incompatible universes(
Pe malul stâng al Dunării albastre / On the left Bank of the Blue Danube,1983); registering the sacrifices of the forced acceptance of compromise (
O lumină la etajul zece / A Light at the 10th Floor,
1984); rememorizing the chaos of social re-stratifications,(
Figuranţii / The Extras , 1987); obliging to the assuming of the past with a maximum lucidity and not under the street’s pressure
(Aici nu mai locuieşte nimeni / Nobody Lives Here Anymore,1995)” (
Irina Coroiu, The New Cinema, no 3/1996 )
