THE NEW ROMANIANS - EARLY SATURDAYS
AT THE SILENT MOVIE THEATRE
June 7, 14, 21, 28

Official website:
http://www.silentmovietheatre.com/calendar/saturday_early.html#june

THE NEW ROMANIANS / Saturdays in June

Once stifled by authoritarian repression, the Romanian film industry has finally found its own voice, and has given both the movie lover and the film critic a cause for celebration. Three years in a row, Romanian filmmakers have won major prizes at Cannes, with director Christian Mungiu crowning the country's renaissance with its first Palme D'or last year. Artful, melancholic, suspenseful, shocking and often hilarious, films like 12:08 Bucharest and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu are both sharp political satires and brilliant exercises in technique and style. Drawing on the formally refined works of nearly unseen auteurs like Lucian Pintilie and Alexandru Tatos (whose influential works are included in this series,) the gifted filmmakers of the New Cinema add a dimension of uncensored social reality, boldly claiming the freedom to express the turbulent past and uncertain future of Romania.

6/7 @ 5pm / SERIES: THE NEW ROMANIANS
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
shown with
Stuff and Dough
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu seems so realistic and convincing, unfolding in real time, that it's hard to believe it was acted. As it follows an ailing boozehound who gets carted from one overtaxed Bucharest hospital to another in search of proper care, a whole stressed society is laid bare: each doctor, nurse, paramedic, and patient leaps into view with sharp individuality and articulate self-defensiveness. Director Cristi Puiu claimed the 2005 Cannes "Un Certain Regard" prize for this darkly humorous, compulsively vibrant feature. Also showing is Puiu's debut, Stuff and Dough, the Tarantino-like tale of a young cash-strapped punk accepting a courier job from a local gangster without ever inquiring just what's in the package. Michael Atkinson of the Boston Phoenix writes: "[Stuff]'s all rhythm and time and experience, a road movie so stripped down that there's almost nothing left."
The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu Dir. Cristi Puiu, 2005, 35mm, 150 min. 5pm
Stuff and Dough Dir. Cristi Puiu, 2001, 35mm, 91 min. 8pm

6/14 @ 7pm / SERIES: THE NEW ROMANIANS
California Dreamin'
Winner of the "Un Certain Regard" prize at Cannes in 2007, California Dreamin' marked a short end to 27-year-old director Cristian Nemescu's career, as he was tragically killed in a crash six weeks after the film's principal photography wrapped. Inspired by an event that had occurred in the late 1990s during the Kosovo war, the film finds a scheming village station master in a Bucharest suburb blocking a train filled with NATO military equipment and American Marines for lack of legitimate customs papers. The scenario unfolds over the course of several days, as village locals mingle with the self-righteous stranded troops. Forced to live side by side, both groups discover that life can never again be quite the same.
Dir. Cristian Nemescu, 2007, DigiBeta, 155 min.

6/21 @ 7pm / SERIES: THE NEW ROMANIANS
12:08 Bucharest
shown with
Corneliu Porumboiu Shorts
History - who remembers, and how - is at the heart of Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 Bucharest. A provincial television station decides that it's going to produce a show on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of the fall of the communist government, focusing on what transpired in that town at the exact time that Ceausescu fell. Unhappily, the only two eyewitnesses the station can find are a hard-drinking history teacher, and an elderly retiree who works as a part-time Santa Claus. The show begins, and the two panel guests pour out their versions of what happened on Dec. 22, 1989. It doesn't take long for viewers to start phoning in their own versions of that day, often taking the eyewitnesses to task for what they think are outright distortions. Shown with Porumboiu's two other recent films, the shorts Liviu's Dream (2004) and A Trip To The City (2003).
12:08 Bucharest Dir. Corneliu Porumboiu, 2006, 35mm, 89 min.
Liviu's Dream Dir. Corenliu Porumboiu, 2004, 35mm, 40 min.
A Trip To The City Dir: Corenliu Porumboiu, 2003, 19 min.

6/28 @ 6pm / SERIES: THE NEW ROMANIANS
Sequences
shown with
Reenactment
A program highlighting two key films that point the way to today's Romanian New Wave. Astonishingly rich in its insights into the dynamics of filmmaking, Sequences is comprised of three episodes, each of which involves a camera crew at various moments in a production. In the first part, the words of the film's protagonist come to describe the director's own life. In the second sequence, an insignificant family drama hides deeper tensions off the set, and in the startling finale, two extras discover that during the war they were bitter enemies. Art imitates life, or is it the other way around? Reenactment, formerly banned in its native country, is the story of two students who, after being arrested for public drunkenness, are given the option of jail, or working on a state-sponsored documentary on the evils of alcoholism. 12:08 Bucharest director C. Porumboiu cites Reenactment as the best film Romania has ever produced.
Sequences Alexandru Tatos, 1982, 35mm, 98 min. 6pm
Reenactment Dir. Lucian Pintilie, 1968, 35mm, 106 min. 8pm