FOCUS:

A film festival that grows by leaps and bounds, the Third Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), scheduled 28 May to 6 June 2004, right on the heels of Cannes, is better known to guests by the region than by its host city. For although Cluj, located in the northeastern corner of Romania, may be officially known as Cluj-Napoca (to indicate its Roman origin), to neighboring Hungarians it is Kolozsvar (to refer to its days in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire), and to visiting Germans as Klausenburg (to cite its founding by Saxon-Germans in the Middle Ages as one of the Siebenbürgen, or »seven cities«). Transilvania also hits a high note in film history as the mythical abode of Dracula ­ reason enough for festival director Tudor Giurgiu to schedule an outing to Sighisoara, another picturesque 13th-century Siebenbürgen town that was the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, the real-life Count Dracula.

For cinéastes Cluj also offers yet another major attraction. This is the city where a budding Hungarian cinema achieved in pioneer days its first major artistic and commercial successes. Jenö Janovics, director of the Hungarian National Theatre at Kolozsvar, began in 1914 to direct films based on his popular stage productions. This is where Alexander Korda directed his first silent film for the Corvin Studio before departing for Budapest and Vienna, then Hollywood and London. This is also where director Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtiz) and actor Bela Lugosi got their filmmaking starts. Thus, it was only fitting that for TIFF 2004 some 300 guests from 30 countries were invited to participate in a three-day »Romanian Days« session to promote a new generation of Romanian filmmakers, to celebrate »Shooting Romania« as a location site, and to launch the new website for Romanian Film Promotion (www.romfilmpromotion.ro), of which Tudor Giurgiu is the founding President. For nine days over 80 films were programmed to an audience of 15,000 at four venues, one of which was an open-air site in the courtyard of a university. Awards were given by an International Jury, a »Cinemagia« Student Jury, and a Romanian Critics Jury.

Under programming director Mihai Chirilov and programming coordinator Rik Vermeulen (on loan from the Rotterdam Film Festival), TIFF prospered with his trump card ­ a broad range of challenging thematic sections: Competition (young directors), SuperNova (veteran filmmakers), Korean Style (Asian retrospective tribute), Aurora (Icelandic Focus), Shadows (Fantasy & Horror), 3 x 3 (Trio Tributes to Kim Ki-duk, Lars von Trier, Wong Kar-wai), No Limits (On the Edge Entries), 100% (Bill Plympton animation retro), Politics and Cinema (Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine opened the festival), and a line-up of a dozen Special Events. In addition, the Deutsches Kulturzentrum in Cluj celebrated the 10th anniversary of its exceptionally refined German Cultural Week (June 4-10) with a lively rendition of Beethoven Ninth Symphony, a presentation of Andreas Dresen’s award-winning Halbe Treppe (Grill Point) (2002), and the presence of the newly appointed German Ambassador to Romania, Wilfried Gruber. Also, Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head On) (Germany), the Golden Bear winner at the Berlinale, officially closed the festival.

Even the Romanian Days offered ample room to celebrate. Cristi Puiu’s Cigarettes and Coffee had already been awarded the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlinale, Catalin Mitulescu’s Traffic had received the Best Short Film Award in the International Competition at Cannes, and Corneliu Porumboiu’s A Trip to the City was the runner-up award winner in the Cinefondation Competition at Cannes. All well and good, but when an official from the Romanian Ministry of Culture was asked at Cluj if any of these three awarded filmmakers stood a chance to receive state funding for a feature film, her answer was a noncommittal shrug: »What can I say ­ other than that subsidies in our country are unfortunately decided by committees, not by festival awards or international recognition.« The Transilvania Trophy for Best Film was awarded to Josué Méndez’s Dias de Santiago (Days of Santiago) (Peru), the story of a young soldier who returns home to Lima as a lost and disillusioned soul after fighting terrorism and drug-dealing in his own country that was at the same time waging a war with neighboring Eduador. Méndez was present to receive the coveted festival trophy.

Ron & Dororthea Holloway