First Transilvanian International Film Festival in Cluj 2002

Every guest arriving at the First Transilvanian International Film Festival (3-9 June 2002) in the Romanian city of Cluj (formerly Klausenburg) asked the same question: »Where’s Dracula’s castle, and how do I get there?« To which Tudor Giurgiu, the festival’s founder-director responded with an amused grin: »We’re screening Murnau’s Nosferatu on closing night ­ to musical accompaniment, thanks to Goethe-Institut/InterNationes!« Just another way of saying that no less than four castles lay claim to Dracula’s hideout. Probably Bram Stoker meant the castle in Sighisoara (formerly Schässburg). A 13th-century museum town, Schässburg is an hour’s drive away.
        Cluj, inhabited by the Dacians in ancient times and founded as Napoca by the Romans in the 2nd century, can boast of the most moviegoers in Romania. The city has academies and universities, baroque architecture and gothic churches, four bishoprics, a national theatre and opera house, museums and cultural centers for Hungarian and German minorities. Some student volunteers at the festival spoke five languages: Romanian, English, French, German, and Hungarian. The 108-page TIFF catalogue boasted government and city support, two dozen sponsors (Nescafe, Kodak Cinelabs), and key international film partners (Wild Bunch, European Film Academy). Last, but certainly not least, Tudor Giurgiu is surrounded by cinéastes, among them artistic programmer Mihai Chirilov and media professional Ada Roseti.

        Cristian Mungiu’s Occident (Romania) was awarded the Transilvanian Trophy. A tragicomedy about the longing of many Romanians to emigrate to the West ­ thus the title ­ Occident reworks the theme by weaving three consecutive stories together within the period of a week to portray the same events from entirely different perspectives. Similarly, in Andrea Sedlachkova’s Victims and Murderers (Czech Republic), the incestuous love of half-siblings is recounted in flashbacks to throw light on the tragic events of the present. The film’s ensemble were jointly awarded the Prize for Best Actors. And the Film Camera Award went to Andras Nagy for his atmospheric cinematography on Andras Fesos’s Seaside, Dusk (Hungary). Filmed in winter in Budapest and on the German island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, the elements of sea and wind, a dreary sky and a dismal dusk, convey a feeling of longing for warmth and an unrequited love.
        Altogether, 45 films were programmed in two venues. The competition, opened to first and second features, ran the full spectrum from a studio film (Michael Gondry’s Human Nature, USA/France) to an amateur production costing a mere $1,000 (Grzegorz Lipiec’s That Life Has Meaning, Poland). Oana Pellea, Romania’s popular stage-and-screen actress, served on the jury. Among the international award-winners in the »SuperNova« section were Danis Tanovic’s No Man’s Land (Bosnia), David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (USA), Ulrich Seidl’s Dog Days (Austria), Hayao Miyazaki’s animated feature Spirited Away (Japan), Lukas Moodysson’s Together (Sweden), Sean Penn’s The Pledge (USA), Pavel Lungin’s The Wedding (Russia) und Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmoniak (Hungary). No Man’s Land, awarded this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, was voted the Audience Prize in Cluj.

        Guests are warmly greeted in Cluj by Tudor Giurgiu ­ in photo right with KINO’s Ron and Dorothea Holloway ­ one of the most knowledgeable festival directors on the circuit. British director Michael Radford was on hand to present his Dancing at the Blue Iguana. Jason Priestley, Canadian actor and TV personality (Beverly Hills) introduced Richard Kwietniowski’s Love and Death on Long Island (UK, 1997), in which he plays one of the lead roles. As for the jury members, they numbered (in photo right, left to right) Hrafn Gunnlaugsson (Iceland), Constantin Vaeni (Romania), Lewis B. Chesler (USA) ­ guest Jason Priestley ­ Oana Pellea (Romania), Ron Holloway (USA). The »3x3« retrospective saluted Francois Ozon (France), Michael Hanneke (Austria), and Radu Gabrea (Romania/Germany). In the »Romanian Cinema« section every seat was filled for Lucien Pintilie’s The Afternoon of a Torturer, an open-ended, part-fact, part-fiction dialogue with a former member of the dreaded Securitate during the Ceaucescu dictatorship. Other festival highlights were »Shadows«, a series of horror and fantasy films, and the »Tranzit« program, featuring shorts and documentaries by film students.
        The discoveries of the festival? Two classics by Radu Gabrea: Too Little for a Big War (1969) and Beyond the Sands (1973), both as important today as when they were produced three decades ago. Too Little for a Big War, an antiwar film, premiered at Locarno. Beyond the Sands, a metaphorical statement on socialism, was invited to the Directors Fortnight at Cannes and banned by Ceausescu. Shortly thereafter, Gabrea emigrated to Germany. Returning to Romania in the mid-1990s, he was one of those chiefly responsible for the passing of a new film law, which in turn is instrumental in providing subsidies for shorts, documentaries and feature films of a new generation of Romanian filmmakers.

Ronald Holloway

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