Aristocrați și escroci balcanici în filmul occidental

The multicultural and multiethnic societies in the Balkans were seldom mirrored in Western literature and cinema. Most often their aristocrats and swindlers offered spectacular images from this region of the world. Writers like Byron, Saki, Saul Bellow, Alistair MacLean, Olivia Manning, Lawrence Durell and Agatha Christie spent some time in the Balkans, while others such as Voltaire, Bram Stoker, Karl May, G.B. Shaw and Sidney Sheldon have never set foot in these places. On the other hand, Jules Verne, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Marguerite Yourcenar, Umberto Eco and Julian Barnes tried to do a more thorough research into Balkan history and culture. Apart from screening literary works on the Balkans there are mainly three reasons for making films about this region: to portray some local historical figures, to locate romances and to use their ill fame or simply to tell stories about venturesome voyages in exotic places. Therefore most often such images are conventional and full of stereotypes. However, a stereotype proves a certain fame and it is better than no image at all

Westernul românesc – între modelul american şi corectitudinea politică naţională

As early as 1957 Romanian critics recognized a "local" Western movie in At the Lucky Mill while director Victor Iliu admitted that he was influenced by American Westerns. Since 1968 Romanian cinema has participated in several co-productions with Western character. The three Romanian westerns: The Prophet, the Gold and the Transylvanians (directed by Dan Pița and Mircea Veroiu), The Actress, the Dollars and the Transylvanians (directed by Mircea Veroiu) and The Oil, the Baby and the Transylvanians (directed by Dan Pița) were made between 1979 and 1981. They were preceded by a cartoon with a Western plot, The Far West Girl (1970, directed by Olimp Vărăşteanu), the documentary If I were a Cowboy (1972, directed by Ion Moscu), as well by Western short stories and novels written by Petru Popescu in 1972, respectively by Nicolae Nicolae Frânculescu in 1975 and 1980. The advent of the Western as a genre in Romanian cinema is partly due to the influence of American genuine Western movies, as well as of spaghetti westerns, but mostly to the policy of the Romanian communist government. In this respect we have to consider the ideological "thaw" and a period of liberalism inaugurated by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, a distancing from Moscow and an opening to the West after 1968, the visits of two American presidents in Bucharest (in 1969, respectively in 1975), as well as Ceausescu's visits to USA (in 1971 and 1978) and even promoting national-communism after 1971

Romanian New Wave Drama: a New Genre?

It seems that the XIX century realism, cinéma vérité, Italian neorealism and Free Cinema have not exhausted the filmmakers’ ability to innovate in their attempt to achieve veracity. Critics from everywhere, both favourable and unfavourable, have noticed a new way of making cinema, later called the New Romanian Wave, which has caused changes in the aesthetics and concept of the fiction film, but regretfully which did not affect the nonfiction film as well. The author attempts to elucidate the premises of the appearance and the artistic and aesthetic characteristics of this new direction in the Romanian film – an essential stage in the imposition of a new cinema. The most important feature of the New Wave, in addition to technical features such as direct sound and hand-shot, is a new type of sombre drama, alongside of which the neorealist dramas seem like melodramas. In order to convince that this is a different drama from the one in neorealism, the author uses quotations from prestigious foreign critics and comparisons made between the films “Death of Mr. Lazarescu”, “Aurora”, and “Police, Adjective” and some neorealist films such as “Bicycle Thieves” and “Umberto D”. Thus, the specifics of the aesthetics of the creation of the young filmmakers: Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristian Mungiu and others is configured