FNE - Why a film festival in Mediaş?
Gabrea - The reason is related to my theory about Central Europe. Two third of Romania belong to Central Europe, and Central Europe has an extraordinary cultural unity with many important achievements. I believe that the Romanian cinema has to be placed also in this context. Secondly, I am sentimentaly connected to Mediaş because I worked as an construction engineer 50 km from it. Moreover, I shot here part of my film Cocoşul decapitat/The Beheaded Rooster. Also, the mayor of Mediaş, Teodor Neamţu, welcomed us very warmly.
FNE - What are your goals with MECEFF (www.meceff.ro)?
Gabrea - MECEFF is a competitive festival, but it's more like a finale. The competition is set between the countries from Central Europe - Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia (editorial note: it was supposed to have also a film from Slovenia, but the negotiations failed.). Each country sent its national prize winner. Hungary is represented by Szabolcs Hajdu's Bibliotheque Pascal, Poland by Jan Kidawa-Błoński 's Różyczka/Little Rose, Romania by Florin Şerban's Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluier/If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, Czech Republic by Radim Spacek's Pouta/Walking too Fast, Austria by Elisabeth Scharang's Vielleicht in einem anderen Leben/In Another Lifetime, and Slovakia by Vladimir Balko's Pokoj v duši/Soul at Peace.
FNE - Who are the members of the jury?
Gabrea - The film critic Dorothea Holloway from Germany, the American writer David Blum, the German journalist Wolfgang J. Ruf, the film historian Costel Safirman from Israel and the head of the National Film Archives from Romania, Anca Mitran.
FNE - How many films are you showing?
Gabrea - 45, and we have 150 guests. We were very enthusiastic while organising and it swelled, if I may say, because all the people we've been talking you were very interested in it. I am talking mainly about the cultural centers of all these countries. There are also films we had to set aside, because there were already too many.
FNE - You also have an invited country guest.
Gabrea - Israel is our special guest this time. Next year it will be Germany and after that Poland. It's I who chooses this guest. That's why we also call the selection 7+1.
FNE - What results you are expecting from its first edition?
Gabrea - First and foremost, I am expecting to have an audience. All the screenings are free of charge, so I hope that thousands of people will come to see the films. Of course, I would like them to come also to our symposiums and debates (on the Third Europe, on the issues of the Israeli cinema in the context of the conflict between Jews and Arabs and so forth). This is a region when before the Holocaust Yddish was the lingua franca, and we are showing some extraordinary old films in Yddish.
We hope that the festival will have a good start. We made it with an extremely low budget. Maybe there are too many films, maybe not too many - we will see. Is very hard to know the recipe from the very begining.
