MEDIA REPORT MAKING WAVES: NEW ROMANIAN CINEMA Generated on December 7, 2012 Contact: Julia Pacetti,
[email protected] Shake Up In Romania Changes a Film Festival in New York Festival Recast by Politics at Home Oana Radu, left, and Corina Suteu of the Romanian Film Initiative with Mihai Chirilov, the artistic director of Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema. By LARRY ROHTER Published: November 27, 2012 Ordinarily, a change of government in a Balkan capital would be little cause for concern at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. But when you sponsor a Romanian film festival, and your Romanian partner comes under attack by the new authorities in Bucharest, thus jeopardizing your joint undertaking, you may find yourself thrust into a political imbroglio. The festival, Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema, will begin as scheduled on Thursday night at Lincoln Center, running through next Wednesday. But the film society has severed its connection to the Romanian Cultural Institute, the festival’s original government-financed co-sponsor, in favor of collaboration with a new, private entity, called the Romanian Film Initiative, run by the former director of the institute’s New York office. 2 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. In New York a festival of Romanian movies was first held in 2006 in TriBeCa under the auspices of the cultural institute, and last year was invited to move to Lincoln Center. But the arrival of a new administration in Bucharest “sent us back to square one,” said Corina Suteu, who resigned in September, along with her deputy, Oana Radu, as director of the New York office of the Romanian Cultural Institute.