The very same day the festival organized by the Romanian Film Initiative and the Film Society of Lincoln Center concluded its 2012 edition, The New York Times published an interview with director Cristian Mungiu, titled Guiding Stars Who Had Never Acted Before.
Rose Kuo, Executive Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Scott Foundas, newly appointed Senior Editor for The Village Voice, Ryan Werner (Sundance Selects) and Susan Norget, the American distributor and the publicist of the movie Beyond the Hills, Julia Pacetti, publicist of the Making Waves festival, Barbara Lanciers, Program Director of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the PR team of the Film Society, Courtney Ott and Eugene Hernandez, took part to the event. Corina Suteu, President of Making Waves, and Robert Koehler, FSLC Programming Director, summarized this edition of the festival and were joined on stage by the lead actresses of Beyond the Hills.
Facing the audience after the screening, in a conversation hosted by Mihai Chirilov, the Artistic Director of the festival, Cristina Flutur stated that "after the audition, Mungiu told me that I could play both female characters just as well, but he had decided to entrust me with the responsibility of playing Alina. Before Beyond the Hills , I had never acted in cinema, so part of the merit for my performance goes to Cristian." Speaking about her rendition of a Romanian nun facing an extreme moral dilemma, Cosmina Stratan said: "At first, I believed I would have no problem whatsoever with playing Voichita, because I thought me and her were very much alike. I was soon to realize I couldn't be farther away from the truth. I found it harder and harder to understand how she could keep all her feelings to herself, how she could be a mere spectator to the things happening around her, without having the guts to do something, anything".
The closing ceremony and the Q&A that followed, as well as many other videos from the festival can be viewed online.
For seven days, Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema presented New York audiences with a selection of 13 feature films (including three of the most significant titles in director Alexandru Tatos ' filmography, as part of a retrospective dedicated to this cult Romanian filmmaker), 4 documentaries and 7 short films. The festival began November 29th, with the New York premiere of Tudor Giurgiu's Of Snails and Men, with the director and the two stars Monica Birladeanu and Andi Vasluianu in attendance. Making Waves also celebrated 40 years from the premiere of Stone Wedding, directed by Dan Pita and Mircea Veroiu, in the presence of actress Ursula Wolcz, lecturer in acting at Columbia University.
The screening of Sequences marked the starting point of the program Creative Freedom Through Cinema, sponsored by Trust for Mutual Understanding, curated by Corina Suteu and Jakab Orsos (Director of the PEN World Voices festival) and dedicated to the analysis of the social and political context in Romania and Hungary. Essayist Eszter Babarczy, visual artist Dan Perjovschi, who also provided the visual identity of this year's edition of the festival, producer Ada Solomon, director Mona Nicoara and arts curator Gyorgy Szab o took part in the two panels that focused on the relationship between the cultural field and political whims in both countries.
"Censorship is not a unitary block: they give you a list what not to do. They don't give you any list, so you don't know what not to do. So it's a very ambiguous relation between you [the artist] and the power. You never know what the Power wants from you," said Dan Perjovschi, who also offered a thought provoking visual presentation.
With the shift in the political scene in Hungary, most of the decision makers in culture and the arts were replaced, said György Szabó, former Managing Director of Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest. "This happened not because of their presumed lack of competence, but because they didn't instantly comply with the new authorities, so the people in the background took over. Artists who don't take sides from a political point of view have no access to state funds."
"These are forces that were always there and there is a long history, even before Communism in our countries, of culture serving the State or political purposes. 1989 destabilized that idea for a while. But 20 years is enough time to regroup, consolidate, to get severely nostalgic for those days when things were good and 'everybody was singing in the same choir.' My suspicion is that just enough time has passed after 1989 for these forces and this understanding of culture as serving the State to find its footing again," concluded Mona Nicoara.
The impressive coverage in the American press (The New York Times, Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, Arts Info, Indiewire, Screen International, etc.) drew over 3,000 people to this years' screenings, significantly more than in the last year. In the conversations that followed the screenings, many audience members, Americans and Romanians alike, voiced their support to the organizers' decision to organize the festival independently, estimating that 2012 was the best edition yet of the Romanian film festival in New York and looking forward to Making Waves 2013.
You can check the media report for this year's edition of Making Waves and support future editions of the festival.
Among this year's guests were also director Radu Gabrea and actresses Victoria Cocias (Three Days Till Christmas) and Anda Onesa (Anastasia Gently Passes).
Presented by the Romanian Film Initiative and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in partnership with Transilvania International Film Festival and the National Center for Cinematography, Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema 2012 (November 29th - December 5th) was supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Blue Heron Foundation, visual artist Adrian Ghenie and over 300 crowd-funders on the Kickstarter platform.
The festival board includes Festival President Corina Suteu, Artistic Director Mihai Chirilov, Scott Foundas, FSLC Associate Program Director, and Oana Radu, festival manager.
Visit filmetc.org or follow us on Facebook for images, videos, press coverage, and more from Making Waves 2012.
