Cinema, Mon Amour | MakingWaves

Cinema, Mon Amour

Original title:

Radu Jude. 2017, Romania, 90 min

Original title: Cinema, Mon Amour
Directed by Alexandru Belc
NEW YORK PREMIERE
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Romania has the fewest screens per capita of any European country. In 1990, there were 450 film venues. Today, only 30 are still up and running. This bittersweet documentary is about one of them, telling the story of Victor Purice—manager, former projectionist, and lifetime cinephile—and his two loyal employees in their everyday battle to preserve Dacia Cinema, located in northern Romania. Having lived through “the golden age” of the country’s cinema, Victor dreams of bringing back the good old days, as he struggles to keep up with the new harsh reality. In a theater that lacks heating and is slowly falling apart, with no support from the state, which owns it, it’s a quixotic wish. Cinema, Mon Amour is a love letter to cinema, celluloid, and a bygone era that illustrates how lucky we are to have such a homey place as the JBFC.

Romania/Czech Republic, 2015, 74m
Screenplay: Alexandru Belc, Tudor Giurgiu
Cinematography: Tudor Vladimir Panduru
Cast: Victor Purice, Cornelia Chelmu, Lorena Cosău
Producer: Tudor Giurgiu
Production: BO Europe, Libra Film, Pink Productions
Festivals: DOK Leipzig 2015
Romanian with English subtitles

Critics’ Corner

Cine-File: A new review of Nae Caranfil`s film (available online)

"DO NOT LEAN OUT THE WINDOW is a boisterous film that looks at the seismic shift in Romanian society with the cautious joy of a caged animal set free. It is a crucial precursor to the revelatory Romanian New Wave that should not be missed."

NY Times: Film Series to Catch in N.Y.C.

"In Romania, the democratic reforms that followed the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 also turned the country into a global filmmaking powerhouse, culminating in what has been called the Romanian New Wave."

NYRB: J. Hoberman recommends

"These thirty films also include some of the best made anywhere during the past three decades."

MW public – Andrei Codrescu: “In Praise of New Romanian Film”

The New Wave festival returns to New York every year with astonishing new films, alongside a well-curated archive. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

J.B. Spins: “Luxury Hotel” – For fans of dystopian social satire

"Luxury Hotel could have probably only been produced during the immediate post-Ceausescu aftermath, when the palace was available, in all its faded grandeur. It is definitely spectacle, but serious, distinctively pointed spectacle."

Screenslate: “The Autobiography of N. Ceaușescu”- conceived as a flashback

"And now it is our turn, all these decades later, to be the ones to look and learn."

J.B. Spins: “The Oak” – Deeply compelling cinema

"The Oak is a defiantly bold, chaotically head-spinning indictment of Ceausescu Socialism, but it is also deeply compelling cinema. This is definitely auteurist cinema from Pintilie that still connects on a profoundly human level."

The Criterion Collection: Romanians… in America

"Film Forum will be showcasing thirty Romanian films made during the thirty years since the overthrow and execution of iron-fisted dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu."

„The Romanian New Wave shows no signs of waning, with steady input from such directors as Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristi Puiu, and Cristian Mungiu."

„The former communist country has emerged as a powerhouse of cinema over the last two decades and much has been made about the Romanian New Wave, a genre of naturalistic and unflinching films that have been consistently winning top prizes such as the Palme d’Or in Cannes and awards at the Berlin and Venice festivals.”

The New York Times

„In the last decade, the emergence of a Romanian new wave has been one of the most startling developments in world cinema, with one film after another winning prizes at Cannes and elsewhere.”

The Wall Street Journal

"Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema, the annual weeklong survey that has helped define and establish the southeastern European country as a stronghold of socially incisive, independently minded personal cinema.”

The Wall Street Journal

„Romania cinema has gradually become a central component of international film culture."