By Nils Bothmann. „Romania has produced some interesting cartoons but in the field of the feature film there has been little of importance, despite the number of co-productions with other countries.“ Thus wrote Alistair Whyte in 1971 in his book “New Cinema in Eastern Europe“. And its true that the Romanian film industry didn't have an easy time under the communist regime from 1949 until 1989, when propagandistically exploitable and heavily stereotyped feature films were the demanded norm. The cartoons that Whyte mentions are works like Ian Popescu-Gopo's Scurta istorie, who under its international title A Short History won the Palm d'Or in Cannes in 1957 for best animated feature.

The end of the communist power effected an artistic development within the Romanian film industry, which was never able to rely on private investors and thus is for the most part heavily dependent on public funds. Directors like Tudor Giurgiu fought for a reform of the appropriate laws, and the country's antitrust agency on January 24, 2006 nodded through a budget of 74.5 Mio. Lei for the Centrul National al Cinematografiei (National Centre of Cinematography), the most important national film fund in Romania. Tudor Giurgiu also founded the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF). Another internationally renowned festival on Romanian ground is the Anim’est, an international animation film festival. The country also has a famous film school to show for itself, the Universitatra de Arta Teatrala si Cinematografie I.L. Caragiale in Bucharest.

Although Romania has a very small annual cinematic output, its directors and films were able to celebrate several huge international successes in recent years. In 2006 Corneliu Perumbeiu received the Golden Camera award in Cannes for 12:08 – east of Bucharest, while in 2007 Cristian Nemescu posthumously won the prize “Un Certain Regard“ for California Dreamin’. And in the same year at the same festival Cristian Mungiu managed to win the Palm d'Or for 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS. One of the most recent Romanian festival triumphs happened in Cannes, too, when in 2008 Maria Crisan won the Palm d'Or for best short film for MEGATRON.

Links

• MY FRIEND IS A CLOUD (RO 2009. Anton Octavian)