ROMANIAN NEW WAVE
Coinciding with the release of Corneliu Porumboiu’s new comedic thriller The Whistlers, and the final days of our Romanian intern Ted Grindei working at our cinema, we bring an ode to the Romanian New Wave movement. Usually set in the last 30 years (from the final years of communism to the present day), the new wave films add up to a vivid record of the country’s history at a time of frequent crisis. Romania’s strongest cinematic era began in the early 2000s and produced a string of award-winning films, six of which we’ll be showing during this program.
The Romanian directors share a realism that draws on the aesthetics of documentary filmmaking: location shooting, long takes and natural lighting. Through long, deadpan sequences, the filmmakers show the way ordinary life is lived: a world where people still suffer the bureaucracy, privation and corruption that was supposedly banished with the death of Ceausescu in 1989. With a sensitivity to the particularity of daily life, the directors focus on how something happens instead of what happens.
Emerging almost out of nowhere and making their films with little means, the young directors brought Romanian cinema to a new level. Nowadays Romanian cinema is witnessing its greatest success ever and is receiving its well-deserved international acknowledgement.
All these films will be screened with English subtitles!
