Romanian Cinema Hits the Big Time With Lincoln Center’s Collection

Anyone who has attended an international film festival in the past three years undoubtedly knows about the hippest new trend: Romanian cinema. After The Death of Mr. Lazarescu tore up the festival circuit in 2005, a wave of films from the previously overlooked country began to receive critical acclaim. 2006 saw the release of Corneliu Porumboiu’s widely released 12:08 East of Bucharest, and just last year, Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

To celebrate this artistic output, the Film Society of Lincoln Center has put together a series of 18 Romanian films spanning from 1964 to 2006, “Shining Through a Long, Dark Night: Romanian Cinema, Then and Now.” The movies can be divided into two movements: before and after 1989, the year of the Romanian Revolution which overthrew the Communist regime.

Of the films made before 1989, the most essential is Liviu Ciulei’s 1964 Forest of the Hanged. Widely recognized as the work that launched Romania onto the international film scene, Hanged won the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1965. The new print playing at Lincoln Center demonstrates Ciulei’s excellent direction and Ovidiu Gologan’s mesmerizing cinematography, which together weave a powerful narrative of the human conscience and the devastating effects of war. Another pre-1989 film not to be missed is Lucian Pintilie’s Sunday at Six, best described as a crossbreed between the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism film movements. Pintilie relates the story of two star-crossed lovers in the communist underground, while simultaneously portraying life in the years leading up to communist rule. Dan Nutu, the “Romanian James Dean,” plays the lead role, which launched him to stardom. The actor, aged but still full of boyish charm, is in town for these screenings.

Sunday at Six subtly attacks the Communist government for its dictatorial rule, like many of the other programmed films. After the 1970s—a cultural thaw in Romanian history that produced a group of filmmakers widely versed in Western films—strict censorship resumed in the 1980s. Many of the directors of the ’80s made their best work during this oppressive period. While a couple of these movies blatantly attack the government, others draw subtle metaphors. Using Romania’s rich cultural tradition of royalty, the filmmakers create allegories of their current political climate. However, to reduce these films to this reading alone would be foolish, for many of the directors illustrate their profound understanding of Romania’s literary masterpieces. Able to evoke years of history despite the strictures of the Communist regime, these directors greatly influenced the new generation of Romanian filmmakers, as is demonstrated in Lincoln Center’s selection of post-1989 films.

Forty years after Ciulei hit the festival circuit with Forest of the Hanged, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu re-introduced Romania to the international film scene. Hailed as the initiator of the Romanian New Wave, Mr. Lazarescu stands among 10 post-1989 films selected by Lincoln Center. While it represents an amazing specimen of Romanian film, its wide availability makes other selections of this two-week series more valuable. For instance, Radu Muntean’s The Paper Will Be Blue—the most recent movie selected—received equal critical acclaim, yet it has received no U.S. distribution thus far. Nonetheless, it has screened at over 50 film festivals. Setting his work in the hours leading up to the overthrow of the Communist regime, Muntean vividly portrays the confusion and uncertainty plaguing the new Romania. While Paper is only his second feature film, the director shows a remarkable maturity in his depiction of war and tragedy. Like Forest of the Hanged, The Paper Will Be Blue explores the moral implications of killing fellow countrymen, leading up to a haunting climax.

In a series as extensive and encompassing as this one, it’s difficult to choose which films to see. Whether Cristian Mungiu’s hilarious 2002 debut Occident or Calin Peter Netzer’s profound Maria, all of the programmed movies offer insights into an increasingly open Romania, and represent the new artistic voices emerging from the country. Once again, the Film Society of Lincoln Center has compiled a film series that successfully documents the emergence of a national cinema. Throughout all of the films, one can trace artistic elements unique to Romanian cinema, and see how prior generations of directors have influenced the latest crop of filmmakers. By no means complete, this two-week program, which comes to a close this Sunday, represents the gates to an entire world.

Although Romanian cinema may seem like the latest fad in the international film scene, new prints of these classic films make them seem as if they were made yesterday. One wonders why Romanian film has only recently become the talk of the town.