Classic Romanian Cinema: before the New Wave
Romanian cinema did not begin with the New Wave. Festival favourites like Radu Jude and Cristi Puiu draw on a rich heritage of communist-era filmmaking often overlooked in the West. In the 1960s, Romanian film flourished as a new generation of directors made the most of a thaw in censorship to produce a flurry of modern masterpieces.
Liviu Ciulei’s stunning First World War drama Forest of the Hanged (1965) put Romanian film on the map when it won big in Cannes. Lucian Pintilie’s heady, meta-cinematic satire Reconstruction (1968) remains one of the most influential films ever made in Romania, a witty deconstruction of power and cinema’s role in upholding it. Meanwhile, Lucian Bratu’s A Charming Girl (1967) has a cosmopolitan New Wave charisma that recalls Truffaut and Varda. And a fresh cohort of filmmaking talent was announced in the earthy folk tales of Dan Pița and Mircea Voloiu’s two-parter The Stone Wedding (1972). Together, these four titles reveal a rich and underseen film heritage.
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Forest of the Hanged
Directed by Liviu Ciulei • 1965 • Romania
The Eastern Front during the First World War. Lieutenant Apostol Bologa (Victor Rebengiuc) fights on the side of the multi-ethnic Habsburg Army against the forces of his native Romania. As the absurdity of the conflict becomes impossible to ignore, and u...
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Reconstruction
Directed by Lucian Pintilie • 1968 • Romania
Voted the greatest Romanian film of all time, Lucian Pintilie’s heady blend of political theatre and uproarious slapstick remains hugely influential to this day. George Mihăiţă and Vladimir Găitan play two students arrested following a drunken brawl a...
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A Charming Girl
Directed by Lucian Bratu • 1967 • Romania
Romania’s answer to the French New Wave delights of Truffaut and Varda, this sixties cult classic is shot through with cinematic joie de vivre. Popular singer Margareta Pâslaru stars as Ruxandra, a young woman with a deficit of talent and an abundance of...
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The Stone Wedding
Directed by Dan Pița and Mircea Veroiu • 1972 • Romania
A long-overlooked cult classic of Romanian cinema set in the rolling mountains of Transylvania, The Stone Wedding is a folkloric film poem in two parts. The first, directed by the late Mircea Veroiu, follows a widow’s travails as she toils ...
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Romanian Classics: before the New Wave
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