Preview: Making Waves Festival Will Be Splashing New Romanian Cinema in New York

Contributor; Slovakia (@martykudlac)
Preview: Making Waves Festival Will Be Splashing New Romanian Cinema in New York
A little bit of Bucharest will soon rise at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center where the Making Waves festival is going to hold its 9th edition. The latest crop of Romanian films kicks off December 4. U.S. audiences will have chance to catch the Romanian nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign-language Film, Tudor Cristian Jurgiu's contemplation upon family relationships, The Japanese Dog or Valentin Hotea´s Roxanne taking place twenty years after the Romanian revolution with central character Tavi Ionescu feeling a sudden bitterness over an old incident when somebody ratted on him to the Secret Police. The original catalyst comes in the form of a home inspection and interrogations for Tavi when an innocent letter to the radio Free Europe about playing Roxanne by The Police for his then sweetheart. Tavi finds out that he might be a father to a now almost adult son. Once again, the film puts on the skin of a decent comedy, but deals with the backlash from "those times", and the consequences which persist even after the fall of the regime. 

Another nostalgic comedy will be delivered by nobody else but the dame of the New Romanian Wave Luminita Gheorgiu starring as Emilia in I´m an Old Communist Hag directed by Stere Gulea. After capitalism and its consequences have nested sufficiently, a wave of nostalgia has hit older generations. The film names the common phenoms in Eastern countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, resulting from an unflattering economical situation which is slyly embedded in the script. Emilia´s daughter comes on a visit from the U.S., as life should be financially easier there compared to Romania. However, the contrary is the case and parents remembering the bygone era of Ceausescu´s regime are determined to help their daughter and soon to be son-in-law despite jeopardizing their own modest living standards. 

The closing film Viktoria by Bulgarian director Maya Vitkova will have its premiere that night. Mesmerizing art direction brings to life three decades of life under the rule of communism rushing towards an abrupt end. Vitkova proves to be a mature filmmaker defined by a singular screenplay defined by thought-provoking details and motifs. The director chooses the point of view of the avowedly damaged wife, Boryana, who wishes to prevent pregnancy by any means necessary, several of them violent in the masochistic form. Her zealous struggle to annihilate any possibility of new life in her womb reaches shocking heights. If Vitkova aimed to subvert the archetype of mother, she has succeeded on many levels. The screenplay deserves further applause for handling such various and diverse motifs and allusions while tying them gracefully into a functional multilayered story. The antithesis of motherhood draws parallels to the Communist regime well. The director even uses archive footage to make the experience more vivid. 

Other films on the menu comprise Quod Erat Demonstrandum reflecting upon the days of Communism when a mathematician's decision to publish a paper in American magazine without permission from the authorities launches a series of events changing not only his life, Romanian short films and amongst other also Corneliu Porumboiu´s The Second Game, an unconventional and compelling documentary over a banal set-up, Porumboiu and his father watching an old football game and commenting grainy 1988´s match. 

Twitch has managed to pose couple of questions to festival´s president Corina Suteau and artistic director Mihai Chirilov to find out more about Making Waves. 

Could you briefly summarize previous edition of Making Waves? 
Corina Suteu: There are two films that were presented last year on which one can comment upon. First, Nae Caranfil's Closer to the Moon, a film inspired by a true and very dramatic story of the most spectacular bank theft during early Communism in Romania, with protagonists being prosecuted and shot after having been promised to get a pardon if they accept to reconstruct the story of the theft on film. A propaganda film, this was. The film was spoken directly in English with Anglo-American cast, Mark Strong and Vera Farmiga among others in leading roles. This was a completely unusual "Romanian film". Hence, the mixed reactions from the audience: most Romanian viewers reacted as in shock and had a problem to accept it is a Romanian story told in an American way, while the American ones took it very naturally and liked the film. The film revealed the number of cultural clashes one can detect between the European and American audiences, but also revealed how much one is still dependent on 'expectation' rather than experiment when engaging in an artistic experience as a spectator. The second film Child's Pose by Calin Peter Netzer, winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin, was an expected box-office success, as the film depicted the complicated relationship between an over possessive mother and her son and the moral crisis of a corrupt and dysfunctional socio-political system in nowadays Romania. What was to be noted is that the interpretation of the story was very different on the side of the Romanian spectators who were more sensitive to the human aspect as compared to the foreign audiences who were appalled by the unethical outcome of the drama. Both films show that there is now a bigger diversity in scope and style of the Romanian cinema. 

Mihai Chirilov: Talking about this growing variety of the recent Romanian films, it's also worth mentioning the enthusiastic response to the low-budget independent comedy Love Building. The New Romanian cinema is not usually associated with this type of cinema, light and entertaining - with its undeniable charm and original story setting, Love Building filled a void and proved more than welcome by an audience that sometimes complains about getting alienated by the dark, depressing, gritty shades of the Romanian social realistic cinema. Equally charming was the trip down memory lane stirred by the screening of the so-called Transylvanians' trilogy, a cult series of red westerns made in the 80s under the Communism as disguised propaganda, where Romania was posing as America (where the action takes place) and Romanian actors speaking English and playing American characters. To Romanians, it was nostalgia-fuelling; to Americans, it was a camp, yet mind-blowing discovery. 

Why do you think Romanian films should travel? 
Corina Suteu: All works of art should travel as broadly as possible, but Romanian films (those which ARE works of art) remain very much in touch with the auctorial 'voice' and this gives them a special and unique flavour of speaking universally about profoundly individual, intimate, human problems. "Think local act global " in this artistic way is very efficient and very valuable. 

Mihai Chirilov: Good films should travel by default - and the Romanian cinema managed to produce constantly films worth being selected and awarded in international festivals, even now, ten years after the big break with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. We all know that fashions come and go, especially in this volatile film world where critics grow tired about certain trends and always look forward to the next best thing. It's also true that not all the good Romanian films go big in international festivals (call it geopolitics or whatever) - that's why I think it's important, whenever possible, to design and maintain a professional and specific platform like this Romanian film festival in New York and offer them a chance to be seen and judged in a broader context. The simple fact that there were and are hundreds of people who are supporting through donations the continuation of this private event speaks volume about their willingness to keep up-to-date with what's new and great in Romanian cinema every year. And then there's one more thing: given this spectacular rebirth of the new Romanian cinema, classic films and authors from the past that were programmed at our previous editions were given a chance to be discovered or rediscovered - like it was the case with Lucian Pintilie, the most important Romanian film director ever, whose film screenings at Making Waves festival prompted MoMA to organize a full retrospective of his work and thus make justice to this remarkable filmmaker, otherwise virtually unknown in the States. 

What would be the main difference compared to the last edition? 
Corina Suteu: Each edition is really different in composition and 'design', although the categories remain the same: fiction, documentary, shorts, artist in focus, creative freedom through cinema... and this is due to our own wish as a creative team to give personality to each year's crop. But a major difference still can be identified. Now we know that we can.

Mihai Chirilov: It is actually the first edition after the festival became a 100% private enterprise (back in 2012) that's supported by Romanian state institutions, namely the Filmmakers' Union and The National Film Center. The latter denied any financial support at our previous two editions, despite the festival's recognition and appreciation in New York. It's a smaller edition in scope, reflecting a difficult year in Romania, with less films made given some shady politics that affected the annual funds provided for cinema - but the highlights are there, particularly The Japanese Dog (that opened in San Sebastian and played several European festivals before being shown in New York, at New Directors/New Films showcase this April, along with one of the big winners in Rome last year, Quod Erat Demonstrandum. More, there's a stronger presence of independent films made with no funds from the state, like the new essay by Corneliu Porumboiu, The Second Game, the provocative documentary Where Are You, Bucharest? by Vlad Petri that opened in Rotterdam this year, charting the messy Romanian politics, and all the seven short films in the program. What's more is that the closing gala is offered to the Bulgarian film Viktoria by Maya Vitkova. This highly original work about Communism doesn't qualify as "Romanian" in any way, except for a little co-producing credit with Cristi Puiu's Mandragora - but given the common Communist past that both neighbouring countries share, the film feels Romanian in absolutely any way. Last but not least, the most anticipated event at this year's edition is the recurrent special program called Creative Freedom Through Cinema, charting the relation between art and politics. Having Russia as guest country (through two daring recent productions: Children 404 and Winter Journey), the gay and lesbian rights as topic for debate and famous writer Andrew Solomon attending the panel conversation after the screenings, this year's Making Waves is bound to make a major difference. 

Making Waves runs from 4-8 December at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, and then from 5-10 December at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville.
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Corneliu PorumboiuMaking WavesNew YorkRomanian CinemaRoxanneThe Japanese DogViktoriaVlad Petri

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