RO Version

In 1959, a 4 year old boy from Bucharest, living in a part of the city with nice houses, between Popa Nan and Hala Traian, decided to leave home and go searching for Pif, the famous comic book dog.

He had discovered the Pif universe in the Vaillant magazines, that an aunt had given to his older brother. From that moment on, he has dedicated his life to his passion for comics.

“Being impressed by this magazine, very beautifully colored and big, I badly wanted to go to Paris and meet the characters in real life, because I really believed that they existed.

I packed a small suitcase in which I managed to put a pillow and a blanket. I put on a nice velvet suit, with bloomers and suspenders, I was proud of myself and had a clear plan, to take the bus to the train station and then take a train to Paris.

I was found by an aunt on the street and taken back home”

_{Mircea Arapu/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

That is how Mircea Arapu’s story begins, now 68 years old. He lives in Paris for more that 40 years and is a French citizen. He met us in Saint-Michel, a neighbourhood dear to him ever since arriving in the French capital. 

He is one of the most well-known Romanian comic book creators, and his career is tightly bound to the history of Pif Gadget, where he has published more than 30 episodes of Arthur, the crime fighting ghost and others with Pif and Hercule, or Placid and Muzo.

Already a fan of the Vaillant magazine, at 8 he discovered Pif at a friend from the street. 

“The characters were the same, but the magazine was different, it was smaller. I found out that I could buy more issues at an old book store and I went immediately and bought them. I would read up to 20 issues a week and at some point I realized that I had started thinking in French.”

_{Alexandra Tănăsescu and Mircea Arapu/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

Along with his love for the Pif universe, he discovered his passion for drawing. In high-school, with other colleagues, he made his own comic magazines. He then tried his luck at a contest in the Cutezătorii magazine, along with other Romanian illustrators, and the creator of Pif, Cabrero Arnal was in the jury. Although he only got a mention at the contest, it gave him the courage to continue on that path.

_{Mircea Arapu drawing Pif/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

He created a board with his own comic strips and proposed it to the Cutezătorii magazine, but got rejected. Then he planned to get into the Plastic Arts Faculty and prepared for admission with the painter Zamfir Dumitrescu, a former student of Corneliu Baba.

He was rejected 6 times and gave up on the idea of college, but not his desire to draw.

That’s how he followed his dream in Paris, where he migrated in 1978 along with his family, leaving with one of the last Orient Express trains, exactly like his childhood plan.

_{Mircea Arapu drawing Pif/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

“My first memory from Paris in Gare d’Est, where I saw Pif at a news stand, but my first more serious memories are from Saint Michel, where I would walk around a lot. I liked it because there were many book stores specialised in comics.”

In 1980, along with other Romanians who shared his passion – Sorin Anghel, Valentin Tănase, Traian Marinescu – he published the first issue of „Peur”, the first comic magazine with Romanian authors, edited in French. That got him the invitation to show his original boards at the International Festival in Angoulême and at Maison des Artistes – Paris.

Mircea Arapu then wrote the chapter on Romania in the History of The Comic Book.

And his path led, naturally, to to Pif Gadget magazine.

_{Pif aniversary album, done by Mircea Arapu/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

“I went to the editorial office of Pif with a catalogue of drawings, to show them what I could do and they proposed that I started working in a big team of illustrators that were only doing Pif, the main character. I refused to be lost in a sea of different illustrators and started working on Arthur, the ghost, which was very complicated. At first it was difficult, for 6 months I drew unpaid, just to practise.

_{Pif aniversary album, done by Mircea Arapu/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

I worked at Pif from 1981 until 1988, when the magazine wasn’t doing very well, and I had to find work somewhere else, because I had to pay my apartment. That is how I ended up working in advertising.”

_{Mircea Arapu, Paris/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

Even in advertising he used his passion for drawing and tried to pitch comic strips to clients.

Then, in 2005 and 2009 he returned to Pif, and he is presently at his third collaboration with the magazine. More than that, this year he was invited to do an anniversary album, on Pif’s 75th birthday, and has won the contest launched by the French Post to draw a special stamp with Pif.

_{Aniversary stamp done by Mircea Arapu/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

“The new director of the magazine looked me up, precisely because he liked my initial drawing of Pif. Then, for the stamp, I used a strip. I think it was a world premiere, to have a comic strip on a stamp.”

Looking back, Mircea Arapu wouldn’t change anything in the destiny that brought him here. He speaks about comics as passionately as he did as a child and continues to spend his time drawing. 

Given all the refusals that he hit in his youth, his story seems to be the perfect example of perseverance in reaching your goal, eventually leads to success.

_{Pif aniversary album, done by Mircea Arapu/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

In Romania he collaborates with the magazine Fabulafia, where, since 2019, he is drawing a comic series for children aged 8 to 10, called Enciclo-pe-tub, educational adventures of Oana and Brazil, who are vloggers.

In Paris he continues to walk the streets next to Saint Michel boulevard, in search of the charm that he discovered in his youth. He sadly finds that many of the bookstores that he knew have since become banks or shops.

“Given my desire to draw and to pursue this career, I am sure that I would have made it in Romania, but there weren’t as many magazines, the same competition. During communism, comic artists were very few and very well paid in Romania, but controlled by the party. With the money they earned they could buy a Dacia.

That wasn’t the case here. I wanted to do this work so that I could develop my drawing skills. Drawing was what I did best and as I worked more, I could draw better.”

-What kept you in this passion this whole time?

-The belief that if you like it, there are chances that someone else will like it. In the same time, I noticed that drawing has always kept me on the surface, whatever I did, drawing has been a constant in my life.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Mircea Arapu, Illustrator of Pif and Hercule: “Drawing has always kept me on the surface.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

_{foto: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă}

We met Mădălina Constantin in the foyer of the La Colline Theater in Paris, one of the 5 national theaters in France. She was greeting the people working in the theater and she led us through the back rooms of the theater as if it was her home.

She is an actress and is playing in the most recent project put together by one of the most appreciated directors in France and the director of the La Colline Theater, Wajdi Mouawad. The show “Racine carrée du verbe ȇtre” has a 6 hour duration and is inspired by the originally Lebanese director, who is known for writing the screenplay for Incendies, directed by Denis Villeneuve.

For Mădălina it has been a challenge and an overcoming of her own limits, but especially fulfillment. 

“Life is in motion, it is important to listen, to see where you feel good, where life blossoms in you.

When I’m up here, on stage, I feel it blossoming and that I am where I belong.”

Born in Câmpina, a town of 28.000 inhabitants, she has always been attracted to acting and only now, at a mature age, has she understood why.

“I have wanted to do this as a child. I would watch many old films, with divas, I wanted to be like those characters, I found them much more interesting than the women I knew. It all started with this fascination.

”And I was stunned that my parents knew actors from the television.

It is obvious now that it was a vital need of expression for me.

I was a pretty introverted child, perhaps even slightly shy, I carried something of a burden, a sadness, I notice it now when I see photos of myself as a child.

I think that acting has helped me , because it is easier for me to express myself when I’m on stage or working on a part.” 

At 17 she left to Bucharest, despite her parents’ opposition, and went with the flow.

“My parents thought that I could follow any profession I wanted. My desire was to study acting, and my father didn’t agree. In the 11th grade, I moved to Bucharest to go to the theater, to the cinema. Those days, Câmpina had only one cinema and now even that one is closed. There wasn’t a theater.”

She was admitted to UNATC, in Ion Cojar’s class, and in her fourth year she made her stage debut in Cătălina Buzoianu show, “2001 Odyssey”, at the Bulandra Theater. She was cast again by the great Romanian director in “Lolita” at the Small Theater. 

Two years after graduating, Mădălina was accepted to a one year stage at the Paris Conservatory, taking one of the 5 spots for 2000 candidates. 

“When I arrived at the Conservatory, I had a culture shock. It is very different from UNATC. 20 years ago, Romania was even further away from France than she is now. It was very hard to adapt, but I learned a lot and managed to keep up with them.”

I learned to appreciate Romanian education even more after that.

At first I felt from a different picture, a foreigner. I kept some of that, I don’t know if it’s because I wanted to or that I could not have done it differently.”

In Paris she has worked with many young directors, and a certain meeting would leave a mark on her career – with the Romanian playwright and director, Alexandra Badea.

“Alexandra’s freedom inspired me. She is someone I admire greatly. It was love at first sight with her, we were compatible in many aspects, we were unseparated for a few years, we made a theater company together, and I acted in her first shows.”

Her role in Solitude, the short film written by Alexandra Badea, has brought Mădălina an award for acting in the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival.

She then started having more important collaborations, acting in Fanny Ardant’s first feature film, Cendres et Sang. Although she was initially more drawn toward cinema, she started to love the theater just as much. An important role in this sense was played by the Russian director Anatoly Vasiliev.

“I have seen this man do miracles. I met him while working with one of his students, then I went to Rome for a month and worked on Chekhov plays with him. To work with a Russian director on Chekhov is amazing.”

I saw actors decomposing and recomposing themselves in front of me. Then I understood a lot about acting and identified with working with him.”

She played in the Avignon Theater Festival and in one of Arnaud Despleshin’s films, Deception, with Léa Seydoux. But she doesn’t think that she has reached a peak in her career, she is reaching for more.

“I have never seen the limits of this profession. I never set a certain goal, to be an actress at Bulandra or anywhere else. I just believed that I have to do my job at the highest level. I’m still on my way, I don’t feel that I’ve reached a peak, I’m still evolving.”

I try to go through life without consciously and rationally deciding what I want and what I will do. I believe that we are connected to things on another level, not just rationally.

My life would have been different if I had stayed in Romania. My life here would have been different if I had met other people.”

Settled in Paris for 20 years, Mădălina Constantin has done more acting on the stages and film sets of France than Romania, not because she wanted it this way, but because that is how it turned out. She would love to have more work in her home country, but many times, she is dealing with labels that limit her activity.

“Today I like saying that I’m a Romanian, I’m not French. My husband says “You’re French, that is what it says on your id card.” I say “no, I’m Romanian.” Maybe I like playing with this. But there is a painful part about it, when I go to Romania, many people I know call me French. Or if I go to an audition, they say “oh, you’re too French.” Still, I don’t have an accent in Romanian, my soul is Romanian.” 

She became a French citizen, but she visits Romania as often as possible. In Bucharest she meets her colleagues, and in her hometown she takes her daughter, who is 8 years old, to see her grandparents. 

“It is important for me that she speaks Romanian and she is very attached to holydays in Romania, our food, our culture, but, I have to admit that here she has other opportunities, she hears things, we see museums, she is much more stimulated intellectual and artistically because we are living here. Even the street itself is so diverse in Paris.”

Ever since she has become a mother, Mădălina’s perspective on life has completely changed. And her struggle for her career has been harder.

“I hit a dimension of life that I didn’t have before. To be a mother is something completely special, for which you are, actually, never prepared and you can’t imagine it before it happens.”

When I was pregnant I almost didn’t get any work, there were physically demanding projects, and when they found out that I was pregnant, They didn’t cast me.

Then, her first year, I took my daughter with me everywhere, on the set, with her nanny. For four years, I have dedicated myself to her.

Then I started to make order in my thoughts and say “now I am 100% an actress and I am fully here”, when I am with my daughter I am 100% mother. A harder thing is to be divided at home, between being a woman, a wife and a mother, it’s been hard for me to separate things.”

She is married to the French actor and director Frédéric Fisbach, but she didn’t get a citizenship for her marriage, she only got it later, for professional reasons.

“I was proud to get my citizenship based on my work, not the fact that I was married. The file was based on my career here.”

When she is not with her child or working on a part, Mădălina commits to her writing and she dreams of the day when her screenplays will become film projects. SHe is especially dedicated to psychology and the woman’s condition in society. She is inspired by Paris life and she enjoys it every time she can.

“I love taking walks in Paris, observing people or just sitting at a terrace and observing behaviors, imagining what is beyond them. Everything about human nature interests me, it is fascinating.

Here I learned to wash away my preconceptions, I try not to judge, I think that judging is the first thing that can block your mind. I believe that it is a part of our work as actors, to try to understand human nature as much as possible and see where a reaction or decision can start.

Acting is a life profession, you can’t separate it.”

• Do your thoughts come in Romanian or in French?
• In my mind, the things concerning the soul are expressed in Romanian and everything else in French.

• Do you ever miss Romania?
• All the time.
• What do you miss?
• I miss specific things that you cannot find here, no matter what. In the air that you breathe, the humour. There are things that are funny only to us. That is what I miss. I feel Romanian. I’m a Romanian in Paris.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Mădălina Constantin, actress: “In Paris I learned to wash away all preconceptions.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

EN

Pe Mădălina Constantin am cunoscut-o în foaierul Teatrului La Colline din Paris, unul dintre cele 5 teatre naționale din Franța. S-a salutat cu angajații teatrului și ne-a condus în culisele instituției ca și cum ar fi fost la ea acasă.

Este actriță și joacă în cel mai nou proiect montat de unul dintre regizorii momentului în Franța și directorul Teatrului La Colline, Wajdi Mouawad. Spectacolul “Racine carrée du verbe ȇtre” are o durată de 6 ore și este inspirat din viața regizorului de origine libaneză, cel care a scris și scenariul filmului Incendies, regizat de Denis Villeneuve.

Pentru Mădălina e o provocare și depășire a propriilor limite, dar mai ales împlinire.

“Viața e în mișcare, e important să asculți, să vezi unde te simți bine, unde înflorește în tine viața. Când sunt aici, pe scenă, simt că înflorește viața și că sunt la locul meu.”

Născută la Câmpina, un orășel de 28.000 de locuitori, a fost dintotdeauna atrasă de actorie și abia acum, la maturitate, a înțeles motivul.

“Am vrut să fac meseria asta de mică. Mă uitam la foarte multe filme vechi, cu dive, aș fi vrut să fiu ca personajele de acolo, mi se păreau mult mai interesante decât femeile pe care le știam. Totul a plecat de la fascinația asta. Și m-a frapat că ai mei știau actorii de la televizor.

Acum îmi e evident că a fost o nevoie a mea vitală de a mă exprima.

Am fost un copil destul de închis, nu eram extrovertită, poate chiar ușor timidă, purtam așa o greutate, o tristețe, o remarc acum când mă uit la poze cu mine de când eram mică.

Cred că m-a ajutat actoria, fiindcă mi-e mult mai ușor să mă exprim în momentul în care sunt pe scenă sau când lucrez la un rol.”

La 17 ani a plecat la București, în ciuda opoziției părinților, și a mers așa cum a purtat-o viața.

“Ai mei credeau că pot să fac orice meserie îmi doresc pentru că învățam foarte bine la școală. Eu îmi doream să dau la actorie, iar tata nu a fost de acord. M-am mutat în clasa a 11-a la București ca să pot să merg la teatru, la cinema. Pe vremea aia în Câmpina era doar un cinematograf și acum s-a închis și ăla. Teatru nu exista.”

A intrat la UNATC, la clasa lui Ion Cojar, iar în anul 4 a debutat în spectacolul Cătălinei Buzoianu, Odiseea 2001, la Bulandra. Tot marea regizoare română a distribuit-o și în celebrul “Lolita”, la Teatrul Mic.

La 2 ani de la absolvirea facultății, Mădălina a fost admisă la un stagiu de un an la Conservatorul din Paris, obținând unul dintre cele 5 locuri pe care se luptau 2000 de candidați.

“Când am ajuns la Conservator, am avut un șoc cultural. E foarte diferit de UNATC. Acum 20 de ani România era mult mai departe de Franța decât este acum. Mi-a fost foarte greu să mă adaptez, dar am învățat mult și am reușit să țin pasul cu ei.”

Am învățat și să apreciez școala românească mai mult după aceea.

La început mă simțeam desprinsă din peisaj, străină. Am păstrat ceva din chestia asta, nu știu dacă pentru am vrut sau pentru că nu am putut să fac altfel.”

La Paris a colaborat cu mai mulți tineri regizori, iar o anumită întâlnire avea să îi marcheze cariera – cea cu românca Alexandra Badea, dramaturg și regizoare de teatru și film, premiată de curând cu Premiul Academiei Franceze pentru Teatru.

“M-a inspirat libertatea Alexandrei. E o persoană pe care o admir enorm. Cu ea a fost dragoste la prima vedere, am avut o compatibilitate din multe punct de vedere, am fost câțiva ani nedespărțite, am făcut împreună o companie de teatru, am jucat în primele ei spectacole.”

De altfel, rolul din scurtmetrajul Solitude, scris de Alexandra Badea, i-a adus Mădălinei și Premiul pentru interpretare la Festivalul de la Clermont – Ferrand.

Apoi a început să se bucure de mai multe colaborări importante, jucând în primul lungmetraj al lui Fany Ardant, Cendres et sang. Deși initial era atrasă mai mult de cinema, a ajuns să iubească teatrul cel puțin la fel de mult. Un rol important în acest sens l-a avut regizorul rus Anatoly Vasiliev.

“Eu am văzut minuni făcute de acest om. L-am întâlnit lucrând cu una dintre studentele lui, apoi am fost o lună la Roma și am lucrat cu el pe piesele lui Cehov. Și să lucrezi cu un rus pe piesele lui Cehov e extraordinar.

Am văzut actori care s-au descompus și recompus în fața ochilor mei. Atunci am înțeles foarte multe lucruri în actorie și m-am regăsit mult în lucrul cu el.”

A jucat în Festivalul de Teatru de la Avignon sau într-unul dintre filmele lui Arnaud Despleshin, Deception, alături de Léa Seydoux. Dar nu consideră că a atins un vârf în carieră, ci tinde către mai mult.

“Niciodată nu am văzut limite în meseria asta. Nu mi-am propus ceva anume, să fiu actriță la Bulandra sau în altă parte. M-am gândit că trebuie să îmi fac meseria la cel mai înalt nivel. Sunt încă pe scări, nu mă simt într-un vârf de munte, sunt într-un proces de evoluție.

Încerc să înaintez în viață fără să decid într-un mod foarte conștient și rațional ce vreau și ce o să fac. Cred că e important să asculți ce îți spune viața. Eu cred că suntem conectați cu lucrurile și la un alt nivel, nu doar rațional.

Viața mea ar fi avut cu totul alt curs dacă aș fi rămas în România. Viața aici ar fi avut alt curs dacă aș fi întâlnit alți oameni.”

Stabilită de 20 de ani la Paris, Mădălina Constantin a jucat mai mult pe scenele și pe platourile de filmare din Franța decât în România, nu pentru că asta și-a dorit, ci pentru că așa a ieșit. I-ar plăcea să aibă mai multe colaborări în țara natală, însă de multe ori se lovește de etichete care îi limitează activitatea.

„Azi îmi place să zic “eu sunt româncă, nu sunt franțuzoaică”. Soțul meu îmi zice „ești franțuzoaică, asta scrie pe cartea ta de identitate. Eu zic „ba nu, sunt româncă”. Poate îmi place să cochetez cu asta. Dar există o parte dureroasă în chestia asta, pentru că atunci când merg în România mulți dintre cunoscuți îmi zic „ce faci, franțuzoaico?” sau dacă merg la un castig “ah, tu ești prea franțuzoaică”. Totuși, n-am accent în română, sufletul meu e român.”

A devenit cetățean francez, însă vizitează cât poate de des România. La București se revede cu colegii de breaslă, iar în orașul copilăriei o duce pe fiica sa, în vârstă de 8 ani, în vacanță, la bunici.

„Țin mult ca ea să vorbească bine română și ea e oricum foarte atașată de vacanțele în România, de mâncarea noastră, de cultură, dar trebuie să recunosc că aici are alte șanse, aude lucruri în jurul nostru, vedem muzee, e stimulată mai mult intelectual și artistic pentru că stăm aici. Chiar și strada e atât de diversă în Paris.”

De când a devenit mamă, perspectiva Mădălinei asupra vieții s-a schimbat complet. Iar lupta pentru carieră a fost cu atât mai dificilă.

„M-am izbit de o dimensiune a vieții pe care înainte nu o aveam. A fi mamă e ceva cu totul special, pentru care nu ești, de fapt, niciodată pregătită și nici nu îți poți imagina dinainte cum o să fie.”

“Când am fost însărcinată nu am lucrat aproape deloc, erau proiecte care mă solicitau foarte mult fizic, apoi când aflau că sunt însărcinată, nu mă mai alegeau.

Apoi, în primul an de viață, am luat-o pe fetița mea cu mine, pe platou, împreună cu bona. Timp de 4 ani, m-am dedicat foarte mult ei.

După care am început să reușesc să îmi pun ordine în minte și să spun “acum sunt 100% actriță și sunt cu totul aici”, când sunt cu fetița mea sunt 100% mamă. Mai greu e să te împarți acasă, între a fi femeie, soție și mamă, mie mi-a fost greu să delimitez lucrurile.”

Este căsătorită cu actorul și regizorul francez Frédéric Fisbach, însă nu a cerut cetățenia franceză pentru căsătorie, ci mai târziu, din rațiuni profesionale.

„A fost o mândrie că mi-am luat cetățenia pe baza muncii mele, nu pe baza faptului că m-am căsătorit. Dosarul pe care l-am depus s-a bazat pe cariera mea aici.”

Când nu este cu copilul și nici nu lucrează la un rol, Mădălina se dedică scrisului și visează la ziua în care scenariile sale vor deveni proiecte de film, dedicându-se în mod special psihologiei și condiției femeii în societatate. Se inspiră din cotidianul parizian și se bucură de el de fiecare dată când are ocazia.

„Îmi place să mă plimb în Paris, să merg, să văd oameni sau pur și simplu să stau la terasă și să observ comportante, să-mi imaginez ce e dincolo de ele. Totul mă interesează la ființa umană, e fascinantă.

Aici am învățat să mă debarasez de idei preconcepute, încerc să nu judec, mi se pare că judecata e primul lucru care îți închide mintea. Cred că face parte din meseria noastră de actori, de a încerca să înțelegi cât mai mult din ființa umană și să vezi din ce loc poate să plece o astfel de reacție, de decizie.

Actoria e o meserie de viață, nu poți să o separi.

-Gândurile îți vin în limba română sau franceză?

-În mintea mea lucrurile de suflet sunt exprimate în română și toate celelate în franceză.

-Dor de România simți vreodată?

-Tot timpul.

-De ce ți-e dor?

-Mi-e dor de specificitatea de acolo, pe care nu o pot găsi aici, orice s-ar întâmpla. E în aerul pe care îl respiri, e umorul. Sunt lucruri la care doar noi râdem. De asta mi-e dor. Eu mă simt româncă. Sunt o româncă la Paris.”

***Materialul face parte din seria “Săptămâna Franței”, un proiect Cultura la dubă susținut de BNP Paribas.

The post Mădălina Constantin, actriță: “La Paris am învățat să mă debarasez de idei preconcepute.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO Version

Ami Barak is an important figure in the world of contemporary art. Few know that he is, originally, from Romania.

For 6 years He was in charge of the department dedicated to the Art of the City of Paris and coordinated the first editions of Parisian White Nights.

He is a contemporary art curator and an ex college professor, in a permanent search to discover new talented artists, the one who binds ideas and artistic concepts in the form of an exhibit. 

He was born in Bistrița Năsăud, was raised in Baia Mare and studied Art History in Bucharest. In 1974 he was leaving from under the Ceaușescu regime and starting a new life.

“My leaving happened miraculously. Nobody thought that it would happen so quickly. In those days, when you submitted a request to go abroad, it took years. And most didn’t even get to leave. I left after 3 weeks. Only after it happened did I find out how it was possible.

Ceaușescu was waiting for Nixon’s visit that year and an American Democrat senator wrote an amendment in the Senate, through which The Clause of Favoured Nations, which Ceaușescu wanted, was conditioned by the opening of emigrations.

And Ceaușescu, as a sign of so called good will, opened the gates for three months, a period in which tens of thousands of Romanians migrated.”

He perfectly remembers the day when he submitted the departure documents. It was the 15th of may.

“All my close ones called me suicidal, they said that they’ll send me to factories or the army, that they will harass me and I will miss everything. My mother cried for a week. In fact, I thought they were right, I felt that I was doing something suicidal.”

The approval came exactly one month later, on the 15th of june. The pretext was that I was visiting some relatives in Israel. I had never seen those relatives. They were a sister and a brother of my father, who had left in 1945 with a ship from Constanța, ended up in Cyprus, were locked up in a camp, then another camp in Palestine.”

With a chemist father, from Piatra Neamț, his mother a bank clerk from Târgu Neamț, Ami Barak has been attracted to art even as a child, without any artistically inclined models in the family. Some art albums fell in his hands and he discovered another world apart from the grey, industrial one in which he was living.

“I saw art history as a refuge from a world where everything was fake. Fake was a five year plan.”

He got to Tel Aviv, where he did two years of master’s degree and had his first exhibits. And in 1982 he left for Paris, where we met him today. 

“It was hard, but not very hard, because I came with a scholarship for a doctorate in Sorbona. I had also been accepted into Columbia and Toronto Universities, but they didn’t offer me a scholarship. So I chose the French.

When I came here, I was seen as an Israeli although I wasn’t one, I was Romanian.

In fact, I have the exact profile of a wandering jew even now.

Even if I have Romanian origins and have kept professional connections with Romania, I don’t have Romanian feelings. The same with Israel. In 1998 I felt like a French person for the simple fact that when France had won the World Cup, I was excited and very happy.”

As he studied more and got in direct contact with the world of art, doing an internship at The Museum of Modern Art in Paris, he became more and more interested in contemporary art. 

“For me even leaving Romania was a thing of the here and now, of contemporaneity. One of my desires in art was to be interested in what is happening today and less about what has happened in the past.”

There weren’t any art historians interested about the present back then. It was frowned upon. Actually, this craft of a curator who is interested in the history of the present, this is a new craft. It was born in may 1969.

There was an exhibit in Bern, Switzerland, curated by a strong figure, Harald Szeemann. The exhibit was called When Attitudes become form. It is considered the event that gave birth to this profession.

There was a concept at it’s basis, and the curator was the one who had the ideas and requested artists whose works were an illustration of that concept.

In the world of museums, exhibits were about historical phenomena, for example, the Dutch scene of the 17th century, or artistic figures seen chronologically – the youth years, mature years. The exhibit phenomenon was not seen as a gathering of ideas.”

“The curator is mindful of what the artist is doing, interprets it and understands the work of an artist and others, that together form a tendency, a movement. This is square one. Then he sets up an event, an exhibit, a festival, etc.”

In 1992 he ran for an institutional position and became the director of a contemporary art museum in Montpellier, in the south of France. 

He was there for 9 years and left for Paris when he received the proposal to organise the events celebrating 20 years of the French efforts to buy contemporary art with public funding.

“I organised 14 exhibits in all of France with works from the collection. The event was called Trésor Public and I worked tirelessly for these exhibits.

After that I was scouted by a recruitment office and that is how I ended up in the Paris City Hall and handled every art project in public space, but also the Contemporary Art Municipal Fund. ”

He curated the first edition of Paris White Nights, an event that would open the doors of contemporary art to the public.

“In the first years of my career I had 100 people to an opening and I thought that was amazing.

At first, in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and even ‘90s, contemporary art was something confidential. We were used to there being a few people, a sort of closed circuit, we didn’t expect a lot.”

-How do you explain the world’s interest in contemporary art?

In the early 2000’s there was a generational shift. Children that were taken by their parents to museums have become adults. At the same time, there was a democratisation of art.

It’s a complex answer to this question, I have even made some studies with sociologists.

It’s true that contemporary art has passed from a confidentiality phase to a mass phenomenon. 

My bet at the time with The White Night was that we would have 20.000 visitors in one night, which would have been huge. The Museum of Modern Art in Paris was rounding up about 20.000 visitors to an exhibit in two months at that time. So it was a bad bet, I was certain that I was about to lose a bottle of champagne.

The shock was that on that night, RATP had a million riders during the night rides. At the spot, it was full of people. 

Today, at an opening, first of all, you can’t get in. Then, even the privileged ones queue for two hours. Thousands of people come to an opening. 

At the Tokyo Palace there is a one kilometer queue.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. The Louis Vuitton Foundation, that has mainstream exhibits, had an event with masterpieces from Russian museums, a phenomenal exhibit with over 200 masterpieces one next to the other – Monet, Gaugin, Van Gopgh, Pissaro, etc. At that exhibit, the audience was white. They had over 1 million visitors, I’ve seen it a few times and they were all white. 

Go now to the Warhol – Basquiat exhibit, also made by Louis Vuitton. Most of the visitors come from the outskirts. The audience is mixed. Sure, Basquiat was african-american, but it’s a contemporary art exhibit.

So contemporary art has also changed the social profile of the audience and its openness. That also explains the growing interest on an international level.

Then, the actual event part had a part in it, the fact that there are performances, installations, a sort of involvement of the audience in the art.

There is also the fashion aspect. 

There is a market, before there wasn’t one, contemporary art didn’t have any value on the market.

As of the ‘90s, contemporary art started to have a much higher market value than some classical works. Adi Ghenie is worth more than a Rubens or a Rembrandt. It’s super-interesting.

It’s also cool to be seen at these kind of events. I know people who save for a half of year to buy a Louis Vuitton jacket or a Pharell Williams thing.”

When he speaks about the world of contemporary art, Ami Barak shows a big smile, he is passionate and full of humour. To understand better the phenomenon behind some of the artworks to which the public reaction is “I could have done that”, the curator explains what is considered relevant in art and what the difference is between an artist whose works are sold for tens of millions at auctions and others whose works are exhibited in museums, but don’t sell as well.

“Up until a certain point, there is no connection between artistic value and market value. Museums buy a work based on a series of criteria, and market value doesn’t play any part.

Museums consider to what extent a work is ahead of its time, in a historical context. How does it represent an important contribution to a historical unfolding. It’s important that it is unique, it is special.

The market, because it didn’t exist, was formed by the first collectors who learned from artists and from those gallery owners who went head first in promoting contemporary art. These gallery owners taught the collector, who didn’t know anything.

Then the first generation of contemporary art collectors was formed, who were going to exhibits, fairs and started to know what they wanted.

“After that there came the collectors from the world of finance, fashion and advertising, people with a lot of money. And it’s typical for people with money, to them it’s important what they like, they don’t worry if the market value is equivalent to the artistic value. And the more expensive it is, the more they are prepared to pay more. As with Michael Jordan shoes. ”

I had an incredible experience regarding market value, that totally changed my perspective as to why people pay so much money for something I don’t think is worth so much.

I was in Seoul and I went to an auction with a Coreean colleague. THe auction was not selling works of art, but boulders, rocks. When I say boulders, I’m not exaggerating. There were rocks, of different dimensions, smaller, bigger. THere were some things that I found extremely ordinary. The highlight was a small boulder of about 10 kg, that looked like it was from the street.

• How high do you think the auction went?
• Tens of thousands of euros?
• 3 million dollars. Then I realised that what is being spent on and how much is being spent is a completely different planet.

Then, regarding contemporary art, is it fair to say that an artist can be ranked high at auctions, but not as visible in great museums or galleries?

It’s frequent. But it’s works the other way around. If it’s seen by a museum, at some point it will intersect with the market.”

Even in our times, although contemporary art is a worldwide phenomenon of wide interest, it continues to spawn strong controversy and amazement sometimes. And it is normal that it does, we learn from the vastly experienced curator.

History will give us clear answers and help us understand the present, how we got, for example, from Renaissance art to NFT’s. In 2021, the artist Beeple became the third most expensive artist living, after his work, “Everydays: The first 5000 days”, a digital collage made out of 5000 illustrations, sold at an auction as an NFT for 69 million dollars.

“In 1913, a French artist called Marcel DUchamp, decided that a work of art can be an object that was not made by the artist. The first ready-made object was a chair on which he put a bicycle wheel. So the artist didn’t create the object, he chose it.

Duchamp gave a definition “who is an artist? The one who makes the art. And what is art? It is what the artist makes.” It’s tautology. Why do I mention this?

In 1913, the roads split. The field of definition of art changed. When you speak about Leonardo and Duchamp, you don’t speak about the same artistic field. It’s clear that you can’t be understood.

If a granny says that this is not art, she is right, you can’t even argue with her.”

She knows that art can be one way, we know that it can also be in another way.

In contemporary art we have painting, sculpture, but we also have ready-made, installations, artificial intelligence, multimedia.

And another thing happened when photography was invented. Something that can be multiplied infinitely has no market value. And we come today to the digital world. To give it a market value, the NFT was created. It becomes, then, unique. The non-fungible token is just for you. But a photograph without it being an NFT, can be multiplied infinitely.

And the speculative character raises the market value.”

While contemporary art events all over the world are evolving along with technology, public museums in Romania look like in the 19th century, says Ami Barak, former president of the International Association of Contemporary Art Curators. In the Romanian language, the word curator has not even been included in the dictionaries.

Ami Barak was part of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest’s board for 9 years, but in the last years, he has only worked with the private sector.

This year he is curating several events in Timișoara, European Capital of Culture, an exhibit in Cluj and is closely following the artistic scene in Romania.

“The first museum in Romania that functions on a model of modern art museum is MARe. In Romania, private centres, unconventional spaces, they work very coherently.”

His time is split between work, exhibits and travel, and in Paris he enjoys concerts conducted by Cristian Măcelaru, musical director at the French National Orchestra, regarded by the French as a superstar.

He is the father of two, his daughter following his passion for contemporary art, while his son, film school graduate, has become a butcher.

He lives in the heart of Paris, close to Place de la Bastille, where he met us, at the end of a work day, in which he had met several young artists.

One of them asked him what should he do to be noticed. Ami Barak answered this:

“When I go to an exhibit, I immediately know that this work belongs to this one. How do I know? Because I have seen before and it is a specific thing of the artist, a signature, a style. It’s him and nobody else. That is what I told him: Make it so that when I walk in to an exhibit and see one of your works, I will know iti is yours. It doesn’t mean that you will be rich, but that you will have your place in the history of your time.

Van Gogh only sold one work in his lifetime, he died a poor man and today he holds records. For a work to be valuable, at first it has no value. Picasso said the same thing. The idea of speculation only works this way.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Ami Barak, curator: “Contemporary art has gone from maximum confidentiality to a mass phenomenon.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO Version

In the heart of Paris, close to Notre-Dame Cathedral, in the Senne bank, we meet Ramona Hovarth, the most appreciated Romanian jazz pianist of the moment, living in the French capital for almost 15 years.

Her artistic journey begins in her family in Bucharest, with a cellist father and an art-restaurer mother, in a house with a piano. At only 3 years old, Ramona made friends with the keys and knew that she wanted to play that instrument, in spite of her family’s desire that she studied the violin.

Today she plays in the most important jazz clubs in Paris and biggest festivals in Europe, along with some of the most appreciated French musicians.

“My family (mother and grandparents) tried to push me toward violin, arguing that I had more chances, that in an orchestra there are more violins, but only one piano. But I wanted the piano. I started playing by ear at three and at six I started studying at school.”

She was a high school student when Irina Margareta Nistor, an English teacher, put her in contact with the director of the Cinematheque, to take part at a special event.

“A silent film had been restored , the first Romanian-French co-production – The Independence War, by Grigore Brezeanu, 1912, and there was a special screening at the Cinematheque. The director back then (Savel Stiopul) was looking for a piano player to musically illustrate the screening. Being a war movie, with a lot of battles, music was difficult to create.”

Being noticed since school for her musical spontaneity, Ramona was chosen for this cine-concert, which would be a turning point in her career. There was a famous French film producer in the audience that night, Pierre-Henri Deleau, co-founder of Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival.

“He thought it was a wonderful idea, that such a young girl would play music for this historical film, and decided to include the film in the Strasbourg Film Festival. That is how I got to France for the first time.”

“I had a royal welcome. Pierre-Henri Deleau became my friend and kept inviting me to other film festivals.”

At the time, the young pianist continued studying classical piano at the Bucharest Conservatory, and her leaving to France, which wasn’t on her mind yet, would only happen in a few years. Still, the connections that she made in France helped her meet a great jazz player, the Romanian piano player Jancy Korossy, who was an immigrant in the USA in the ‘60s, after being noticed by Ella Fitzgerald’s agent.

“He had just returned to Europe when I had finished school, he had settled in Germany. And I went there to take jazz lessons. I got to him thanks to the father of the composer Vladimir Cosma, Theodor Cosma, former conductor for the Electrcord Orchestra in Romania, who had Jancy Korossy as a pianist and arranger. 

Jancy Korossy was the severe teacher who would become her mentor and her best friend. Ramona and her mother welcomed him into their home and took care of him until his final days. Thanks to him, Ramona has decided to dedicate herself to jazz music, even though she had studied classical piano. 

“I am a mixture of many things and genres, I think that we all are made of many things.

My mixture is of all kinds of music that I love, that I played in my life. I have listened to a lot of traditional Romanian music, gypsy music, pop music, r&b, latin-american, jazz, classical, I am made out of all those things.

“I believe that it is important to have periods of searching, not to have only certainties that we are something and we only do that something. If you have that mentality, you might miss out on interesting things in life.”

Jazz suits me mainly because of the spontaneity. It’s created on the spot. No matter how much you practise at home, you only see the result on the stage. That is what attracted me most. I love life’s challenges and spontaneity.

And Jazz is harder as you not only do not know what you will do, you also do not know what the other musicians will do. That is where art, talent, and preparation come in, knowing how to match your spontaneity to the other one’s spontaneity.”

Having travelled to France only as a visit, as a young high school piano player, Ramona returned to Paris as a student of Jancy Korossy, for an artistic residence.

“I came here, not knowing anybody, I could barely speak any French. The residence should have lasted 4 months and was extended for 2 years. During those 4 months I tried to be active, to play some shows that seem to have made a mark. At the end of the residence, they proposed that I remain until the end of the year, to play a bigger concert then.”

That 4 month trip sums up today 15 years. 

“I made money only by playing. I don’t really know how to do anything else, other than music. Then, I came to a point where I already had some experience. It’s hard coming as an adult in France. France is a good country to raise your children.

You need to settle in as a child, when you’re in school. France is a country of connections. You can’t do anything if you don’t have connections.

When you come as an adult, the time it takes to do something is multiplied by 100. ”

In Paris she met some of the biggest jazz musicians in France, with whom she later shared the stage.

“I think that it is a sum of many things that make an artist be liked, to maintain, to win over an audience. It’s a unique recipe each time, depending on the artist, but there are some ingredients, such as charisma, luck, being in the right place at the right time.

There are many talented people, but who are not charismatic. There are many charismatic people, who aren’t really extraordinary at what they do. I think there has to be a balance of these ingredients.

I don’t think that it’s very hard to play on an important stage once. I think that for an artist, the hardest thing is to maintain. THere are new artists catching up daily. ”

Even though life in Paris has not been easy, Ramona Horvath has stood out as an artist and is in a constant evolution. Aside from concerts, many albums, the pianist has become a teacher at a Conservatory near Paris.

In her free time, she enjoys going to her friends’ concerts and takes every opportunity to meet musicians who she admires.

“If I were not here, I don’t think that I could ever play what I am playing now. When I first got here, I had the chance to see in the jazz clubs some great artists that I listened to on records. To hear them, speak to them, to me it was extraordinary and I knew that I couldn’t have that anywhere else.

Paris is a key destination for all world renown jazz musicians.

In Romania I would never have that. Surely, many things are changing in Romania, for the better, maybe in a few years it will be like this. But, geographically speaking, we are not in the same area of interest for American jazz musicians. They make a few hours by train between places of interest like Belgium, France, Germany, etc. It’s a lot easier for someone organising a tour when the roads connect logistically.”

To the French she has become known as an excellent player of Duke Ellington’s music, but she doesn’t like labels and remains open to the variety of musical genres that she loves.

“Duke Ellington means a lot to me, because he represents two worlds that I am fond of, a crossroad between jazz and classical music. These things speak to me, I hear and understand them.”

When we speak about Romania, Ramona shows a big smile and speaks with warmth. She says that she will forever remain connected to her roots.

“I am tied to Romania mainly through my mother. I miss my mother a lot, she doesn’t come so much to visit me, last year she came for the first time. I visit her as often as I can.

My mother gave me my love for France, she is a francophile, she had never been to France, but she loved French culture – films, music, literature. I wasn’t a francophile as a child, I liked America.

On the other hand, I Have always believed that when you are a musician, you are a universal citizen, it doesn’t matter where you are from. But I think I am the only one who believes that, haha. When you are born and raised in a country, that will never disappear, you are bound to it whatever happens.

Then, it depends on each individual how they position themselves regarding this, if they want to cultivate some of the things that they liked, or if they want to forever shut down things that they didn’t like. What I love most about Romanians is the human warmth. Romanians are friendly, open, and warm from the first. You don’t have to wait 2 or 5 years to befriend a Romanian. ”

After a few hours spent together, Ramona fits the description above perfectly. She shows us a recently opened jazz club, on a luxury boat on the Senne, where she will play a concert on the 13th of july, French National Day.

For her it will be a summer full of events, such as The Barcelona Jazz Festival, The Serbian Jazz Festival, and in autumn she will put out a new album. 

“- What would you say to Ramona from 20 years ago?

– I’d tell her to come to Paris faster.

One one hand, my musical education from Romania was very helpful. I think that is what sets me apart from the musical landscape here, that I have such a diverse musical background.

On the other hand, I would have loved to study here, but if that had happened, I would have never met Jancy Korossy, and that would have been the greatest loss of my life. Everything I learned from him was like a school at home. He handed me everything about jazz, playing daily, me standing next to him, stealing his craft.

That was the most important education that I ever received.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Ramona Horvath, pianist: „A musician is a universal citizen. It doesn’t matter where you’re from.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO

Born in Oravița and going to high-school in Bucharest, young Cristinel Șirli was dreaming in the ‘80s of becoming a cinematographer. At the age of 20, a horrifying diagnosis that gave him only a few months to live, would change his destiny.

Today he is one of the most important film sound engineers in France, owning his own studios, at the highest level, in the center of Paris.

“In Romania they gave me a 5 months chance of survival. My uncle, Vasile Șirli, composer, was here, in France, he looked into it and here they gave me around 8% chances of survival with a 9 months treatment that involved full-time hospitalization.

So I came here for treatment, but my visa was only for three months, they didn’t want to extend it and I either went back to Romania and was done for, or stayed here with 8% chances to live.”

He remained in Paris, knowing that he could never return to Romania, where he would die. A long period of recovery followed and for eight years he carried on fighting the illness, but he also started a new life. When he left the hospital, he was committed to learn French and finding an occupation.

„Because of my health issues I couldn’t work as a camera operator, so I thought I’d do something else that I enjoy, also connected to film.”

Being related to Vasile Șirli, a well-known theater and film composer, he ended up studying sound.

„I went through the necessary stages and after 4-5 months I was already working. I worked a lot, mixing many television shows, documentaries.”

He started as an assistant sound engineer and then worked as an engineer at an independent studio until 1998.

„Then I thought that it would be better if I became a freelancer, to be able to work with more independent studios. I worked a lot and in 2000 I realized that I had so many clients, I wanted to start my own firm.

But because I didn’t have the means to build a studio, I rented. Two years later, my old employer went bankrupt, I went to the courthouse to pay off his debt and took over his studios, 4 at the time.”

That’s how he started building what today is one of the most appreciated sound mixing and sound design companies in the world of film.

“There was an old cinema in Paris, Le Grand Pavois, which had gone bankrupt. I bought this cinema and turned 4 projection halls into 4 sound studios for cinema.”

It was successful very fast and I then looked into making a bigger sound mixing studio, I was looking for a place and I found this huge space and I wanted to build my studios here.

I planned everything and found financing. We’re talking about a 10 million euro investment, I have never had that kind of money.

Anyway, in France, even if you have money, you still get a loan. It’s much safer, financially. If you can’t keep your car, you sell it and then you don’t lose all of the money. I know that this mentality is not present in Romania. But western logic is different.

If I have a million euro in my company account and I want to open a studio that costs 1 million euro, I go to the bank and get a one million euro loan. Sure, French interest rates are not that high. But we never make investments in cash because you never know what tomorrow brings.”

So we found Cristinel Șirli working, in one of the most performant sound studios in Paris, in the 15th arrondissement, close to the Eiffel Tower.

At the front desk we were welcomed by his daughter, Eliza, who is working behind the front desk until she finishes her studies. On the walls in the mixing rooms we can see posters of some of the films that had the sound mix done there, at Creative Sound – “Respect” or “Fast and Furious”.

The first thing that the Romanian sound engineer wants to show us is the fascinating hall in which sounds from films are created from scratch. It looks like a storage place for all kinds of objects, but it’s a place filled with crativity and passion.

In order to understand the universe of sound, Cristinel explains the main pillars.

“Ambiental sound is what you hear on the footage – birds, the city, the train. Sound effects are door sounds, electric equipment, water flowing from the tap, etc. And foley refers to these sounds that we remake in the studio. We are in a foley studio and the ones who create these sounds are foley artists.

If a character from a film moves a chair, the foley artist remakes that movement watching the footage. You can’t learn this in school, it’s a thing that is passed on.

Then, if a chicken passes through the frame, they make chicken sounds. They are true artists.

And finally, sound design is everything that doesn’t exist and we create, abstract sound. For example, what does a space ship that doesn’t exist in real life sound like? We imagine and create that sound.

In our studios we cover all of those categories.”

Minding every detail, as a manager, Cristinel is 100% involved so that his studios reach perfection in sound.

“This is a cabinet from the ’30s. An Ikea wardrobe cannot sound the same as this cabinet. The same with wood floors. Here we have a wooden floor that is over 200 years old. It’s really noisy, I bought it from an antique store and it was originally in a hotel.

Here there is a Parisian window, that has a particular sound, unique, the wooden frame sounds some kind of way.”

Many Hollywood films end up in Cristinel șirli’s hands or other engineers using his studios, to be dubbed in French. Among these there is Oscar winning film The King’s Speech.

„It’s a film that touched me because it was also about language. I try to stick to the original version as much as possible, that means 100%. And the voice of the actor cast here, the interjections, everything came out perfect. The French version of The King’s Speech is one of the best French dubbed films.

The dubbing industry here is colossal, bigger than the film industry, because all films must be dubbed. We have thousands of actors and other people working behind the scenes, thousands of jobs.

French actors demand that the dubbing is done here, in the central studio. Some directors demand it too. The most recent, working here right now, is Roman Polanski.

Polanski also did his last film here and told me << Cristinel, you have exceptional studios and trust me, I know what I’m saying.>> Last evening Polanski was here, he’ll be here this evening again.”

He is also a constant collaborator with George Lucas’ studios, and business is prosperous both individually, as well as for the entire company Creative Sound. He currently owns 12 studios and is working as a sound engineer and as a manager for all the studios.

„When they have to send american films to be dubbed in French, the people at George Lucas’ studios reccomend me. I have reached this level being a Romanian, and Romanians don’t have a good reputation when it comes to sound. I am happy and proud of this.”

His evolution is even more impressive as he works with directors from all over the world and is doing sound mixing for many foreign languages.

„Some had doubts, not because they were racists, but because they were not convinced that I understood French words in order to work on the sound. Then, the transition from television into cinema was a bit weird for the French, it’s not a common thing.”

At a recent reunion of French sound engineers, the person who had done the sound mixing for the French film that won the Palme d’Or this year (Anatomy of a Fall – 2023) and someone said that he was the third French sound engineer with a Palme d’Or.

–              What about me?

–              Oh, you did a Romanian film.

–              But it was mixed in France, it’s my film.

–              Yes, but it’s a Romanian film.”

He did the sound for the film that brought the Palme d’Or to Cristian Mungiu, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days. He is also a supporter of Romanian filmmakers, every time they have asked for his help.

„A lot of people say that you can’t hear Romanian films. Indeed, there are several problems regarding this issue.

First – the cinemas are not calibrated. Sound has to be perfectly calibrated in order to work, and in Romania, there aren’t any specialists who can calibrate sound in cinemas. I saw a film that I had mixed here in a Romanian cinema in a mall, and it wasn’t calibrated. It’s not ok.

Then, historically, Romanians have never had a good sound school. Russians had a good school. Romanians are extraordinary when it comes to cinematography, with the lighting and visual aesthetics, but the sound has always been a problem. In Ceaușescu’s time it was the same.

And, not least, there aren’t any studios. If we sum all these up, you get bad sound in films.”

Despite all of the above, Cristinel Șirli continued working on Romanian films, from the desire to give back to people he admired as a child and encourage the new wave of filmmakers.

He has worked on some of the most relevant Romanian films in the past 20 years, such as California Dreamin’, 4,3,2, Beyond the Hills, Child’s Pose or Aferim!, awarded in Cannes or Berlinale, but the Romanian label has not always been associated to success in cinema.

„I was working with a director and he came one morning with the Liberation news paper, he put it on the table and the front page read “Romanians are coming to break our parking meters.”

I said:

–              <<Why did you bring this?

–              Aren’t you Romanian?

–              I am, but not like them.>>

That was a joke, nothing serious. Somebody once said to me:

–              <<Are you Romanian?

–              Yes, I am Romanian.

–             And you aren’t tanned, like they are?

–              When I go to the beach, I am tanned, I said laughing.>>

These things don’t get to me, I even make jokes on the matter. I have my pride, I never hide that I am Romanian, I keep my head high, nothing ever bothers me. The French are not racist and I treat jokes as such.”

He has worked with great French directors, but his biggest satisfactions came from working with Romanian filmmakers.

„My greatest joy was working with directors like Mungiu, Netzer, Radu Jude, but most of all with the seniors – Dan Pița, Sergiu Nicolaescu, Stere Gulea, the ones that I admired in high-school. That was really magical. To have behind me, in this studio, Stere Gulea, on The Moromete Family part 2, to me was amazing.

We see a film as a child, we give it so much, we try to make it perfect, so it is hard for me to choose which one was the most important to me. Each experience is special.

Some directors prefer to come in once in a while, they see the advancements, they give notes.

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days was special because it doesn’t have any music. Mungiu, when he first wrote to me, he said that he wanted the audience to be glued to their chair of fear, anguish, but that he doesn’t want any music, he doesn’t want any sound design, gust real sound. He wanted the truth in his sound.

When you think about it, no music, no sound design, then how do you show fear, stress? On a horror film, for example, if you remove the music, you don’t have anything. It was very difficult, but when I was in the cinema at the Cannes screening, it was extraordinary. The screening started at 10 in the evening and nobody left the cinema.

Mungiu’s style is that he sits next to you and doesn’t leave the studio at any time. You go out to the toilet, he goes out with you. You come back, he comes back with you.

Puiu, on the contrary, he wasn’t like that. He came towards the end to see.

This year I have worked on Călin Netzer’s latest film, he was in Paris and he would come at the end of the work day, he would see the progress and give notes.

Sound is very tiresome, especially if you don’t do it all the time. And it’s possible that you won’t get the necessary reaction if you are caught in it all day long.”

When he speaks about film and sound, Cristinel Șirli lights up. Although he doesn’t need the money, he continues working, he feeds on his passion as if it were a vital nutrient – “If you take this away, you kill me.”

For him, the day starts early in the morning, continues inside the isolated walls of the high-end Dolby-Atmos studios, and ends at night, when the Sun sets over Paris.

“When I get out of the studio and drive home, I put on classical music, to calm me down. We work a lot and it’s hard. We start at 7 A.M. and finish at 9 in the evening. I try to take care of myself now, but there were times when I would work even more.”

On the list of projects already finished this year, there is Luc Besson’s latest film and the French version of Guy Ritchie’s latest film.

He hopes that his example encourages young people to chose his profession and the new generations lay the foundation for a Romanian school of sound.

“If a young Romanian is passionate, he should work in Romania. Maybe study in the West and come back to help Romanian cinema to have true value when it comes to sound.

When I visit my mother and I see empty villages, everyone gone to Germany, Spain, Italy, it hurts. There used to be good people, and because they didn’t have the means to remain in Romania, they went to do construction work in other countries. Human value is lost.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Cristinel Șirli, the sound engineer in charge of one of the top studios in France: „I didn’t come to France to do sound, it was a matter of life and death.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

ENG Version

Născut la Oravița și ajuns la liceu în București, tânărul Cristinel Șirli visa în anii ‘80 să devină operator de imagine. Pe când avea 20 de ani, un diagnostic înfiorător, care îi mai dădea doar câteva luni de viață, avea să îi schimbe, însă, destinul.

Azi este unul dintre cei mai importanți ingineri de sunet de film din Franța, având propriile studiouri, la cel mai înalt nivel, în centrul Parisului.

“În România mi-au dat o șansă de 5 luni de supraviețuire. Unchiul meu, Vasile Șirli, compozitor, era aici, în Franța, s-a interesat și aici aveam cam 8% șanse de supraviețuire cu un tratament de 9 luni, de spitalizare non-stop.

Am venit, așadar, pentru tratament, dar viza mea era pentru 3 luni, nu au vrut să o prelungească și fie mă întorceam în România și eram terminat, fie aici aveam 8% șanse să trăiesc.”

A rămas la Paris, știind că nu se va mai putea întoarce în România, unde oricum avea să moară. A urmat o lungă perioadă de recuperare și timp de 8 ani a continuat să se lupte cu boala, dar a început și o nouă viață. Când a părăsit spitalul, s-a dedicat învățării limbii franceze și găsirii unei ocupații.

„Dându-mi seama că din cauza problemelor de sănătate nu mai pot să fac meseria de operator de cameră, m-am gândit să fac altceva care îmi face plăcere, tot legat de film.”

Avându-l în familie pe Vasile Șirli, binecunoscut compozitor de muzică de teatru și film, a ajuns să studieze sunetul.

„Am făcut stagiile necesare și după vreo 4-5 luni eram deja angajat. Am lucrat foarte mult, am mixat foarte multe emisiuni de televiziune, documentare.”

A început ca asistent de inginer de sunet și a lucrat apoi ca inginer la un studio independent până în 1998.

„Atunci m-am gândit că ar fi mai bine să fiu liber profesionist, să pot lucra în mai multe studiouri independente. Am cunoscut mulți oameni, am lucrat mult și în 2000 mi-am dat seama că am atâția clienți, încât mi-am zis să ridic o societate pentru mine.

Dar pentru că nu aveam mijloacele să construiesc un studio, am închiriat. Doi ani mai târziu, fostul meu patron a dat faliment, m-am dus la tribunal să plătesc datoriile pe care le avea și am preluat studiourile lui, 4 la vremea aceea.”

Așa a început să contruiască ceea ce azi este una dintre cele mai apreciate companii de mixaj și sound deisgn în lumea internațională a cinematografiei.

“În 2007 era un cinematograf istoric din Paris, Le Grand Pavois, care dăduse faliment. Am cumpărat acest cinematograf și am transformat 4 săli de cinema în 4 săli de sunet de cinema.”

“A avut succes foarte repede și am căutat apoi să îmi fac un studio de mixaj mai mare, căutam un loc și am găsit acest spațiu imens și am zis că vreau să îmi fac studiourile aici.

Am făcut planurile și am găsit finanțatori. Vorbim despre o investiție de 10 milioane de euro, eu nu am avut niciodată banii ăștia.

Oricum, în Franța, chiar dacă ai banii, tot iei credit. E mult mai safe din punct de vedere financiar. Dacă nu mai poți ține mașina, o revinzi și n-ai pierdut toți banii. Știu că în România nu există această gândire. Dar logica din occident e complet alta.

Dacă eu am 1 milion de euro în contul companiei și vreau să deschid un studio care costă 1 milion de euro, eu mă duc la bancă și fac un credit de 1 milion de euro. E adevărat, în Franța dobânzile nu sunt așa de mari. Dar investițiile nu le facem cu bani gheață fiindcă nu știi ce se întâmplă a doua zi.”

Așa se face că noi l-am găsit pe Cristinel Șirli la lucru, într-unul dintre cele mai performante studiouri de sunet din Paris, în arondismentul 15, la câțiva pași de Turnul Eiffel.

La recepție ne-a întâmpinat chiar fiica sa, Eliza, care face muncă de secretariat până își definitivează studiile. Pe pereții dintre camerele de mixaj stau afișe ale unora dintre filmele mixate aici, la Creative Sound – “Respect” sau “Fast and Furious”.

Primul lucru pe care vrea să ni-l arate inginerul român de sunet este fascinanta hală în care sunetele din filme se creează de la zero. Arată ca un depozit cu felurite obiecte, însă este un loc încărcat cu creativitate și pasiune.

Ca să înțelegem mai bine universul sunetului, Cristinel ne explică principalii piloni.

“Ambianțele sunt cele care se aud pe filmare – păsările, orașul, trenul. Efectele sunt sunetele de uși, aparate electrice, apa care curge la robinet, etc. Iar foley se referă la aceste sunete refăcute în studio. Noi ne aflăm într-un studio de foley, iar cei care creează aceste sunete se numesc artiști foley sau, în română, artiști zgomotiști.

Dacă un personaj dintr-un film mișcă scaunul dintr-un punct în altul, artistul zgomotist reface aceeași mișcare uitându-se la imagine. Nu există școală unde poți învăța asta, e o chestie care se transmite.

Apoi, dacă e o găină care trece prin cadru, ei scot sunete de găină. Sunt cu adevărat artiști.

Iar, în final, sound design se referă la tot ce nu există și noi creăm de la zero, sunet abstract. De exemplu, cum face o navă spațială care nu există în realitate? Noi ne imaginăm și creăm acel sunet.

În studiourile noastre lucrăm pe toate aceste paliere.”

Atent la fiecare detaliu, ca manager, Cristinel se implică 100% pentru ca studiourile sale să atingă perfecțiunea în sunet.

“Aici e un bufet din anii ’30. Un dulap Ikea nu are cum să redea același sunet ca dulapul acesta. Este exact ca parchetul. Aici e un parchet care are peste 200 de ani, scârțâie foarte tare, l-am cumpărat la un anticar și a fost la origine într-un hotel.

Aici e o fereastră tipic pariziană, care are un sunet particular, unic, lemnul se aude într-un anumit fel.”

Multe dintre marile filme de la Hollywood ajung pe mâinile lui Cristinel Șirli sau ale altor ingineri care folosesc studiourile sale, pentru a le dubla în varianta franceză. Printre acestea se numără The King’s Speech, câștigător al Premiului Oscar.

„E un film care m-a marcat pentru că era și despre limbaj. Eu încerc să mă lipesc de versiunea originală cât se poate de mult, adică 100%. Iar vocea actorului ales la castingul de aici, interjecțiile, totul a ieșit perfect. Versiunea franceză la The King’s Speech e în topul celor mai bune versiuni făcute vreodată în Franța.

Industria de dublaj aici e colosală, mai mare decat industria de film, pentru că toate filmele trebuie să fie obligatoriu dublate. Avem astfel mii de actori și alți oameni care lucrează în spate, mii de locuri de muncă.

Actorii francezi impun ca post-sincroanele să se facă aici, în centru. Am și regizori care impun. Ultimul, care lucrează chiar acum aici, e Roman Polanski.

Polanski a făcut și penultimul film tot aici și mi-a spus: << Cristinel, ai studiouri excepționale și crede-mă că știu ce vorbesc.>> Aseară Polanski a fost aici, în seara asta va fi aici.”

Se bucură de o colaborare constantă și cu studiourile lui George Lucas, iar afacerea prosperă atât la nivel individual, cât și pentru întreaga sa companie Creative Sound. Deține în prezent 12 studiouri și lucrează atât ca inginer de sunet, cât și ca manager al tuturor studiourilor.

„Când trebuie să trimită filme americane pentru dublaj în Franța, cei de la studiourile lui George Lucas mă recomandă pe mine. Am ajuns la acest nivel, culmea, fiind român, iar românii nu au reputație bună la sunet. Sunt bucuros și mândru de asta.”

Evoluția sa este cu atât mai impresionantă cu cât lucrează cu regizori din toate colțurile lumii și mixează sunetul pentru diverse limbi străine.

„Unii au avut dubii, nu pentru că erau rasiști, ci pentru că nu erau convinși că înțeleg cuvintele franceze ca să pot face sunet. Apoi, faptul că am făcut trecerea de la televiziune la cinema, era pentru francezi un pic dubios, nu prea se întâmplă asta.

La o reuniune recentă a inginerilor de sunet de cinema din Franța, a fost felicitat cel care a mixat la filmul francez care a luat Palme d’Or anul acesta (n.r. Anatomy of a Fall, 2023, Franța) și cineva a zis că e al treilea inginer de sunet francez care are Palme d’Or.

–              Și eu?

–              Ah, păi tu ești la film românesc.

–              Dar a fost mixat în Franța, e filmul meu.

–              Bun, dar e film românesc.”

A creat, așadar, sunetul pentru filmul care i-a adus Palme d’Or lui Cristian Mungiu, 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile, fiind totodată un susținător al cineaștilor români de fiecare dată când aceștia i-au cerut ajutorul.

„Multă lume spune că la filmele românești nu se aude. Într-adevăr, sunt mai multe probleme legate de acest aspect.”

“Primul – cinematografele nu sunt bine reglate. Sunetul trebuie să fie perfect calibrat ca să funcționeze, iar în România nu ai specialiști care să știe să regleze. Am văzut într-o sală de cinema la mall în România un film pe care l-am mixat eu aici, care nu era calibrat. Am trimis semnal de calibrare și nu era calibrat. Nu e ok.

Apoi, istoric, românii nu au avut o școală bună de sunet. Era una bună a rușilor. Românii la imagine sunt extraordinari, fac cadre, lumini, plastică de imagine extraordinară, dar la sunet întotdeauna a fost o problemă. Și pe vremea lui Ceaușescu era la fel.

Și, nu în ultimul rând, nu există studiouri. Dacă adunăm toate astea, rezultă că filmele nu se aud.”

În ciuda problemelor precizate mai sus, Cristinel Șirli a continuat să lucreze la filmele românești, din dorința de a da înapoi ceva oamenilor pe care îi admira în copilărie și pentru a încuraja noul val de cineaști.

A făcut coloana sonoră pentru unele dintre cele mai relevante filme românești din ultimii 20 ani, precum California Dreamin’, 4,3,2, După Dealuri, Poziția Copilului sau Aferim!, premiate la Cannes sau Berlinale, însă eticheta de român n-a fost mereu asociată cu succesul în cinema.

„Lucram cu un regizor și a venit într-o dimineață cu ziarul Liberation, l-a pus pe masă și era pe prima pagină: „Românii care vin să ne spargă aparatele din parcări.”

Și zic:

–              <<De ce vii cu ăsta?

–              Păi nu ești român?

–              Sunt român, dar nu sunt ca ei.>>

Asta a fost o glumă, nu era ceva serios. La un moment dat cineva chiar mi-a zis:

–              <<Tu ești român?

–              Da, sunt român.

–              Și nu ești bronzat, ca ei?

–              Când mă duc la mare, da, sunt bronzat, zic râzând.>>

Eu nu sunt deloc atins de astfel de chestii, chiar glumesc pe seama lor. Eu am mândria mea, nu ascund niciodată că sunt român, țin fruntea sus, chiar nu mă deranjează nimic. Francezii nu sunt rasiști și glumele le iau ca atare.”

A lucrat direct cu mari regizori francezi, dar marile satisfacții le-a avut tot la colaborările cu români.

„Bucuria mea cea mai mare a fost să lucrez cu regizori ca Mungiu, ca Netzer, Radu Jude, dar mai ales cu seniorii – Dan Pița, Sergiu Nicolaescu, Stere Gulea, cei pe care eu îi admiram eu în liceu. Asta a fost cu adevărat magic. Să îi am în spatele meu, în acest studio, pe Stere Gulea, la Moromeții 2, pentru mine a fost extraordinar.

Noi percepem un film ca pe un copil, îi dăm atât de mult, ne străduim să fie perfect, încât e greu să aleg care a fost cel mai important pentru mine. Fiecare experiență e specială.

Unii regizori preferă să vină din când în când, văd cum s-a avansat, dau indicații.

Filmul 4,3,2 a fost cu totul special pentru că nu are muzică. Mungiu, când mi-a scris primul mail, mi-a indicat că vrea să lipească spectatorul în scaun de frică, de angoasă, dar că nu vrea muzică, nu vrea sound design, ci doar sunet adevărat. Vrea adevăr în sunetul lui.

Și te gândești…nu muzică, nu sound design, dar cum transmiți frica, stresul? La un film de groază, de exemplu, dacă tai muzica, nu îți mai rămâne nimic. A fost foarte greu, dar când eram în sală la proiecția de la Cannes, a fost ceva extraordinar. Proiecția începuse la 10 seara și nu a plecat nimeni din sală.

Stilul lui Mungiu este că se pune lângă tine și nu părăsește studioul în niciun moment. Ieși la toaletă, iese și el. Te întorci, se întoarce cu tine.

Puiu, în schimb, nu a fost așa. A venit spre sfârșit să vizioneze. Anul acesta am lucrat la ultimul film al lui Călin Netzer, el era la Paris și venea la sfârșitul zilei de lucru, vedea ce a ieșit și dădea indicații.

Sunetul e foarte obositor, mai ales dacă nu faci asta tot timpul. Și e posibil ca apoi să nu ai reacția necesară dacă ești prins în el toată ziua.”

Când vorbește despre filme și sunet, Cristinel Șirli se luminează. Deși nu mai are nevoie financiară să lucreze direct la butoane, se hrănește din pasiunea sa ca și cum ar fi un nutrient vital – “Dacă îmi iei asta, mor”.

Pentru el, ziua începe dimineața devreme, continuă printre pereții izolați ale studiourilor ultra-performante Dolby Atmos, și se termină seara, când soarele apune peste Paris.

“Când ies din studio și merg spre casă cu mașina, pun muzică clasică, să mă liniștească. Lucrăm foarte mult și chiar e obositor. Începem la 7 dimineața și terminăm la 9 seara. Acum încerc să mă protejez, dar a fost un timp în care lucram și mai mult.”

Pe lista proiectelor realizate deja anul acesta se numără coloana sonoră pentru cel mai nou film al lui Luc Besson  sau versiunea franceză a ultimului film regizat de Guy Ritchie.

Speră ca exemplul său să încurajeze și alți tineri să aleagă profesia sa, iar noile generații să pună bazele unei școli românești de sunet.

“Dacă un tânăr român e chiar pasionat, ar fi bine să facă meseria asta în România. Eventual să învețe în occident și să se întoarcă pentru a ajuta cinematografia românească să aibă adevărate valori la sunet.

Eu când merg la mama și văd satele goale, cu toții plecați în Germania, Spania, Italia, mă doare. Erau oameni buni, gospodari și pentru că nu aveau mijloace să rămână în România, s-au dus să zidească în alte țări. Se pierd adevărate valori umane.”

***Materialul face parte din seria “Săptămâna Franței”, un proiect Cultura la dubă susținut de BNP Paribas.

The post Cristinel Șirli, inginerul de sunet care deține unele dintre cele mai performante studiouri din Franța: „N-am venit în Franța să fac sunet, a fost o chestiune de viață și de moarte.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO

There was a time when mornings in Paris would catch him alongside Samuel Beckett, after countless hours spent talking and drinking whiskey, another time when he would build with Krzysztof Kieślowski three legendary films: Red, White, Blue, and there were those years when he would return to his home country, with Lucian Pintilie, to produce some of the great Romanian director’s films.

We met Marin Karmitz in his office from MK2 in Paris, the film empire he founded in France, with cinemas, production, distribution and film restoring.

we were brought together by Romania and the interest for stories worth telling, whether regarding the world of cinema, or those that marked our history.

As a director and film producer, Marin Karmitz has received over 150 awards and nominations in major film festivals, including three Palme d’Or awards, three Golden Lions at Venice, a Golden Bear in Berlin, three Oscar nominations and no less than 25 Cesar Awards.

He openly greets us for an interview spanning several hours, during which we hear the names of the huge personalities with which he has worked : Marguerite Duras, Jean-Luc Godard, Theo Angelopoulos, Louis Malle or Claude Chabrol.

This story is not only about films and important names in universal culture, it is about a Romanian Jewish child, who lived in Bucharest in fear of the legionnaires, who was deprived of his right to attend a school and who was forced to flee in a foreign country.

That child is 84 today and has an incomparable career.

“I returned to Romania for the first time in the ’90’s for the production of one of Lucian Pintilie’s films (An Unforgettable Summer).

I was staying at a hotel next to the Royal Palace and wanted to find the house in which I was born, where I spent my childhood.”

“Back then there were no maps of Bucharest and I went by foot and managed to find my house by myself. It was on the Dumbrava Roșie street.

It was almost night and I managed to find the house, I was surprised to find myself reliving memories that I couldn’t describe.”

Marin was born into a Jewish family from Bucharest and bares hos grandfather’s name, Marin Karmitz, who ran a profitable dairy business.

His father and uncle owned an important chemical and pharmaceutical products and were some of the first targets of the rebel legionnaire movement, led by Horia Sima.

Marin was only 3 years old when the ultra-fascist rebels came into their house and terrorized his mother. The child was then held at gunpoint, as a method of intimidation of his mother.

“They came to our house searching for my father and his brother. They were there for three days and tried to make my mother say where they were hiding. That I remember very well, the terror we were living in.

Fear is something that you cannot forget it is always there. For example I can’t stand someone putting a gun to my head, figurately speaking, because I had a gun to my head, literally speaking, as a child.

I could not stand feeling pressure in any relation ship. I am known for that in the world of cinema.”

His memories of Romania pendulate now between terror and nostalgia.

“I had a very free childhood, because, as a Jew, I didn’t have the right to go to school. I only learned to read and write when I got to France. And I remember spending a lot of time with the other children in The Icoanei Garden, I would fool around, nobody would watch me. I had no obligations.”

Marin was 9 years old when he left Romania for good. Rid of the fascist terror, Romanian Jews who survived were oppressed by communists, who took all their belongings. So, left with barely anything, the Karmitz family embarked on a ship leaving from Constanța, without a destination.

After several stops in Istanbul, Beirut, Haifa or Naples, in which the Jews were not allowed to get off, the only city they were allowed in was Marseille.

It was only two years after the end on World War II, and Marin Karmitz’s life restarted in France.

“It was the only country that had Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité written on buildings. The only one that would take us.”

He went to a public school close to Nice and later went to Paris. His father wanted him to chose a profession such as law, but he was attracted to the arts.

“Ever since I discovered reading, I became passionate with books, I used to read a lot as a teenager, I didn’t have any friends because we used to move around a lot. We were living migrant lives.

I would have loved to be a writer, but I was no good. I would also have liked to become an architect, I had architect cousins, but I wasn’t good at this either. I couldn’t draw, I had no ear for music. I would have loved to lead an orchestra, but I wasn’t so good at it either.

All I was left was my passion for the world of cinema.

Another explanation is that, for may years, I had an immigrant passport. You needed a visa to go anywhere, we would spend countless hours in customs, getting checked, it was awful. I used to dream of having a diplomatic passport, to cross borders without any problem.

The I realized pretty quickly that cinema was a way in which I could cross any border without leaving my office, only with my imagination. You could travel the whole world without a passport or with an immaterial passport – film.”

“When I made films, produced or distributed them, I became such a traveler, without borders”

He studied cinematography at the L’Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris and graduated to be a camera operator, but he wanted to be a director.

So he first worked as an assistant director, but not with anybody.

“I had the opportunity to work with Agnes Varda, with Jean Luc Goddard.”

He then produced a short film for a young director using money borrowed from his father.

“There was this director that had already worked with all the great producers of the Nouvelle Vague period. And he had this project that all of them turned down. He told me about it and I said that I would try to produce his film.

I did that film with him and a wonderful actor, who recently passed away, Jean-Louis Trintignant.”

The short film was a success, and he earned money to direct his first short film, from a script written by Marguerite Duras.

“This didn’t have any success, but I had the opportunity to work with one of the most well-known woman authors in the world, at the moment. And, among other things, the film features Peter Brook’s wife, Natasha Perry and an actor who gave birth to a whole generation of actors, called Garrel, Louis Garrel’s grandfather.”

The film was, nevertheless, well received among intellectuals. And hos courage and non-conformism opened doors to great cultural creators, becoming one of them himself.

“Working on another project, for a year and a half I had the chance to drink whiskey with Samuel Beckett from 13:00 until 5 a.m. I was profoundly marked by that encounter.”

“I also met Ionesco in the time I was meeting Beckett.”

In 1972, the feature film “Coup pour coup”, which he directed and produced, has marked his career definitely. The story of the film was centered around a strike of a group of working women who could not stand the working conditions in their working place anymore. They seized the owner and demanded their rights. And the reactions from the French working class were impressive.

“The film triggered a terrible scandal. In the cities that showed the film, factory workers would go on strike. At the owner’s pressure, cinemas removed the film.”

Being closely watched by a government that wasn’t so acceptive to such artistic manifestations, Karmitz decided to open his own cinema and carry on bringing to the public films that matter.

“In 1974 I opened the first cinema close to Place Bastille. There wasn’t anything like that in the area. There was a karate cinema and a porno cinema.”

Today, the MK2 film empire means 75 screens in France and 64 in Spain.

In his 40 year career, Marin Karmitz has produced 108 films and has distributed over 350 in his cinemas.

Among the great director with which he has worked, there is also Lucian Pintilie.

“I had heard of Lucian Pintilie, he was well-known in France as a theater director. One day, a producer who had just produced a film, The Oak, told me that the film wasn’t finished, that he didn’t know exactly how to finish it, and asked if I wanted to join the team.

I watched the film, I thought it was wonderful, but very long. I said “yes” immediately, on the condition that we cut it, because, otherwise nobody will see it, and the whole point is that the world watches your film.

That is how I started working with Lucian Pintilie.

– Did he agree to cut the film?

– Yes, that is something typical to all the great directors with whom I have worked. They have always agreed to cut the film, if convinced with arguments. Only small, weak directors don’t agree to cut their films, they don’t accept criticism from others.

Then we made An Unforgettable Summer, Terminus Paradis and Too Late.

I loved Lucian Pintilie, a very cultivated, unforgettable person. As a filmmaker he had an extraordinary talent and a strong personality, he would speak about political and social realities, but with a very personal touch.

There are some directors that show a story, but don’t add to it. Like a news story. He didn’t. He took reality and transformed it through his writing, his style, his dialogues, the way he directed actors.

I have wonderful memories of our working together, because it was a labor in a place of intelligence, a profound exchange in which each would say what he agrees on, what he doesn’t agree on, and why. Dialogue was one of questions, not of statements.

That is something rare.

I had the opportunity to work with such directors in my career. The ones with which I didn’t develop such a relation ship, I stopped working with them.”

Another unforgettable collaboration in Marin Karmitz was with the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. An admirer of Kieślowski’s Decalogue, Karmitz asked to meet with the director.

“I had produced the film Au revoir Les Enfants, by Louis Malle, which he loved. So he accepted to meet me.

We spent the entire afternoon talking about ethic, morals, life, philosophy. And at some point I told him that I would love to make a film with him. And I asked if he had any projects.

He told me that he was working on a project, what would become The double life of Veronique, and that there would be something else. He said “It’s a difficult project, I don’t know if you would be interested. I want to make a film about the three colors – red, white, blue. Liberté, egalité, fraternité.”

I said “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

Kieślowski’s trilogy, inspired by the colors of the French flag and the history of the three principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité made film history and brought the two filmmakers three Oscar nominations, The Golden Lion in Venice and numerous other nominations and awards.

In the producer’s office there is a framed photograph from the set of Blue, in which he stands next to the actress Juliette Binoche and the famous French photographer Robert Doisneau.

“Kieślowski was someone who, the same as Samuel Beckett, had an immense influence on me. Someone truly exceptional.”

“The relation ships I had with close directors were of intellectual intimacy.

At the core of this relation ship is the mutual respect, I am the producer, you are the director, each does his job and respects the others job. The goal is to remain together the best cake.

The death of Kieślowski was a great hit for me. The same for Pintilie, Charbron. Those were great losses for me.”

The many losses have determined, in the end, Marin Karmitz, to stop producing films. He has passed on his knowledge to his sons, who have taken over the MK2 business almost entirely.

The producer now dedicates his time to his passion for photography and contemporary art, having an impressive collection of photographs in the headquarters of the company. In recent years, he has organized several art shows in many countries, including works of art owned by him.

In fact, his work as a director and a producer is shown at the great museums of the world, such as MoMA or Centre Pompidou.

In all his biographies he is labeled a Romanian-French filmmaker and business man, although, to be fair, he has small ties to Romania.

There are still, nevertheless, some bonds that cannot be explained other than through his own feelings, sometimes even to his own surprise.

“I was in Cluj a while ago, at TIFF, to receive an award. I took my two sons because I wanted to show the Romania. It was mid-june and in Paris I had always been attracted to linden, I would always look for them and smell them, I didn’k know why.

So I was in Romania, I went to a park and was simply overwhelmed by the smell of linden. It was the smell of my childhood. Only then I realized why all my life I had been attracted to this smell.

The linden trees in Romania have a stronger smell than the ones in Paris.

All in all, my childhood memories make me nostalgic. I was strongly marked by my childhood, that’s a fact.”

On the other hand, the history that he experienced first hand, will not be forgotten.

“I will be honest, if it weren’t for my childhood memories, which create a very personal universe, I would not feel any affinity towards Romania. Romanians have killed 350.000 Jews. I was shocked to see that when I mentioned this in Romania, people would turn their heads.

When I mentioned Ceaușescu, they turned their heads again.

I was troubled for a long time by this silence and I believe that it is bad that a country isn’t able to acknowledge it’s history and it’s mistakes. All countries committed atrocities, but some acknowledged them and evolved differently. Romania, not so much.”

“A people cannot find it’s identity unless it sees it’s past correctly. This acknowledgement is necessary for all the peoples of the world.”

The reality of the current state of the world does not make the filmmaker hopeful. Even film does not bring him great satisfaction anymore, not financially, but artistically and human-wise.

He walks us out of the giant MK2 headquarters and I ask what good films he has seen lately. He confesses that he doesn’t go to the cinema anymore because he feels disappointed by recent films, so he prefers to spend most of his time in art galleries.

He recalls, however, that the last film that he liked was Drive my Car (Japan, 2021).

He still appreciates Romanian filmmakers who touch on social and political realities in their films and calls them “Pintilie’s students”. He believes that artists have a social responsibility and that their art should contribute to a better world.

“In all history, we had always had the option of choosing between humanity and barbarism, between building or destroying the world.

Now I think that we have entered a time of limitless destruction. We have forgotten our history and have disconnected from it.

For that, among others, it is also our fault, the artists.

In French cinema and others, except Romanian, filmmakers have disconnected from history or have gone to the extreme banalization of violence, which they have taken from American cinema. Violence for a show. It has become pleasurable in film to kill someone. And some spectators take pleasure in seeing someone kill somebody else. It’s awful, it’s bad.

We doubt the human being, human integrity.

The content has degraded a lot, it is filled with stereotypes, and images are selling like hot pastry. In this context, the one who makes the most sales has the biggest shop.

We should reflect more on the content that we make, not necessarily upon where it is shown – platforms, televisions.

If we still believe in human’s capacity to act human, then we will have the desire to see films in human conditions, quality content in the cinema.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post The smell of linden trees in Bucharest and a film empire in France. The fascinating story of Marin Karmitz, the Romanian-French film director and producer appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

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Tatiana Țîbuleac was born in Moldova, she’s a Romanian, the wife of a British-Swiss citizen and she lives in Paris for 13 years. Through her books she has shown more than any passport could, that she is a complex writer, who can bring to live characters from different parts of Europe.

In 2019, her writing career, completely unplanned, took a surprising turn, even for herself. She won the European Union Literature Award for her novel The glass garden, her second book, and next to her name, they put “Romania.”

“I’m Romanian. I introduce myself as a Romanian writer. I’m from Moldova, but everywhere I went with my books, I introduced myself as a Romanian writer. I find it normal. I don’t believe in this separation. Writers from Moldova have always wanted to be a part of Romanian literature.”

And Tatiana Țîbuleac has managed that without even trying. She has never lived in Romania, but she writes in Romanian and is trying to teach the language to her children, born and raised in the French capital.

“My children speak 4 languages – English, French, Romanian and Russian. I like that they discovered reading in Romanian and I think that already is a good way.

I set my ambition not to get any other citizenship, I could have gotten a British or a Swiss citizenship, my husband being British-Swiss. But in the end, I’m still a Romanian in Paris.

Many Romanians try to cut all their ties. To me it wasn’t the case. Probably my desire to go to Romania from Moldova was so strong, that I say proudly that I’m a Romanian.

It’s my small love declaration, I think.”

Tatiana was born in 1978 in Chișinău. Both her parents worked in press, her father as a journalist, her mother as a corrector at a newspaper. And their daughter walked in their footsteps, even though her n’t father would have wanted a more secure path for her, such as medical school or law school.

“I used to love what my father was doing, but back then, journalism was harder to do that what I did. He used to tell me that I will freeze in the cold, that I will be sleeping in attics. In those days, you would sleep in someone’s attic, and do the story at the farm, the school, the kindergarten.

And I chose journalism, eventually. Those were some good years, I liked it a lot. The only issue I had was when I transferred to TV and I had to be a news anchor, I didn’t like that.”

She worked in written press for three years, then she joined Pro TV Chișinău, the first commercial and independent station in Moldova. There she was a reporter, an editor, but also a news anchor.

“I did the first stories of migrants from Moldova in Italy. I remember meeting people who had slept for a half of year tied up in trees, because they couldn’t sleep on the ground, so the police wouldn’t catch them.

There were touching moments for me and I think that is where I learned to listen to people.”

“I learned a lot from journalism and I have never regretted those years. I think that I would still be practicing it, if I hadn’t come to another country.”

After working in press, she collaborated with UNICEF and discovered people from different countries, who have broadened her horizons. She met her husband and moved with him to Paris.

“I’ve always felt like an outsider in Paris. It’s a difficult relationship with Paris and I don’t know why, because it’s a lovely city.

But there are places where you can’t or you won’t fit in. On the other hand, this is what made me feel good in Paris. I’ve never had an issue whether the French will see me as their own or not.”

“Today I’m here, tomorrow I won’t be, I take the best from today. Right now I fell very good in France.”

She didn’t know that her walks on the small Paris roads would open her path to literature.

“I had never felt the need to write literature. You can’t feel the need to write when you’re already writing all day long. My work day used to start at 6 a.m. and would end at 11 o’clock in the evening. All day long I would write or edit, I don’t see how I could have started to write a book at home, when I came home to sleep, or watch a movie, rest, do anything but write.

Writing began on this street.”

On Rue Montorgueil, right in the heart of Paris, the first arrondissement, her first writings that were different that her experience in press were being born.

It was in a vivid area, full of cafe’s and boutiques specific to Paris, a few steps from the out-of-the-box Centre Pompidou and Brâncuși Workshop.

“I stardet speaking to a florist at a flower shop here and she had a great story. And I thought of doing something with her story.

And I started writing some short things on Facebook. I wrote about 10 lines there and called it a modern-day fable. It was like child’s play.

And so many people read that thing, that I continued writing these modern-day fables. Then a website created a permanent column with “modern-day fables”, and somebody from that website said that we should put them in a book. And that is how I actually started writing.

That is when this shift occurred, from journalism to literature, although it was not literature yet. I called them fables because they had a moral in the end.

I wrote about a lot of people in this neighborhood. Things have changed now.”

The flower shop closed down, and Tatiana became an internationally appreciated author.

“With “Modern-day Fables” I started to get thousands of messages, more than I’m getting now, with two published books. People identified with the theme and would send me stories, they wanted to be in Modern-day Fables.

I felt somewhat like an impostor, because everyone would say to me “you’re such a kind, gentle, good woman”, and I’m neither kind, nor gentle, nor good. It was the wrong picture.

There was too much kindness around me and I couldn’t handle it. I felt like telling them that I’m not like that, stop writing to me, you’re pissing me off.

And I believe that that is exactly how “Summer”, my first book, came to be. Because “Summer” is exactly the opposite. I think I wanted to show that I am different, in fact. The writing in “Summer” represents me. I am “The Summer”. I am the woman in there. I am the boy, that is how I am.

“Summer” came to be after a summer I spent with my parents. They came to France, the children were small, and we showed them the country.

We went to the exact places that I’ve described in that book. And I, having a complicated relation ship with my father, I felt for the first time that I have somehow forgotten him, seeing him playing with my daughter. My father seemed a beautiful man, interesting, something I had never noticed, because we would always argue.

I had started writing these stories on my blog around that time and I got home and wrote a story that was the basis for the character of the mother in the book. It was a Jewish mother whom I had met at a hotel and she was dying. We spent a few days together, we chatted. We spent some time at the hotel, where she had came with her children, her head was shaved.

When I got home, I started writing her story. But I noticed that there wasn’t an ending to what I was writing, it wasn’t just a post or a story anymore.

I started writing every day, this masculine voice was in my head and I didn’t know what to do with it and I carried on. I wrote it in less than two months. The editor from Moldova Gheorghe Erizanu was visiting then and asked me if I’m writing anything.

And I said “I’m writing a thing, but it’s bizarre, I don’t know who might read it. Nothing llike this has ever been written in Moldova, a story where the child doesn’t love his mother, there’s a lot of hatred there.” And he told me to send it to him. I sent it on a Thursday and on Monday he told me that he was getting it ready for print.”

“The Summer When my Mother’s Eyes Were Green” received in 2018 “The Observatorul Cultural” award for prose and the FILIT award. She then became known throughout Europe after the first translation, in Spanish.

“I had a complicated relation ship with this book. I hated it. I thought that nobody wanted to see it. But we made our peace and now I somewhat miss a little kindness.

Everything is too cynical now. Everybody’s asking me about crisis, evil, death, depression. Now I’m on the other end of things.

In “Summer” I was Tatiana from Paris, in a way. In “Summer” I denied all that Moldova meant. In “Summer” I’m the cosmopolitan woman, living in Paris, connected to England, who knows galleries, paintings, because that is who I am.

I was often asked why I had chosen to write about two Polish and not two Romanians or Moldavians. I also asked myself those questions. And I think that’s how “The Garden” came to be. That’s where I had my revenge, I went back to Chișinău, in the Botanical, in my neighbourhood.”

The novel “The Glass Garden” confirmed and cemented Tatiana Țîbuleac’s success in Romania, as well as the rest of Europe and South America.

It was written, as was “Summer”, in Romanian, language being a character in it’s own, both in the book, and in the life of Tatiana from Chișinău.

“I think that “The Garden” had been in my head forever, it was inside me. With “The Garden” I had this dilemma, whether to write it in Russian or not. Because there were a lot of things coming in my head in Russian, it being the language of my childhood in a way, the language of the city and it was a book about the city, about Chișinău.

But I chose to write it in Romanian and I’m happy that I chose so, because it’s a story about the Romanian language, not the Russian language.

When I wrote this book, I felt that it was a moment of reconciliation between these two languages. Now I would have to re-read it, see how I position myself, because things have changed.

My father was more Rusophobic than I was. That was one of our reasons for arguing. He distanced himself completely from Russian language when we started using the Latin alphabet.

He felt Romanian and dreamt of the unification with Romania. After we started using the Latin alphabet, he didn’t touch Russian literature. He did what many are doing now, during the war.

In my case, it was difficult to separate myself from the Russian language, because I grew up speaking Russian, and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t have this burning hatred towards everything Russian. It sounds bizarre to argue because of language, but there were many cases, we weren’t the only family.”

Meanwhile, her father passed away, and Tatiana left Chișinău a long time ago.

Her family’s history and the region she was born in still follows her, because the war in Ukraine has profound emotional ramifications.

“Our name is Ukrainian, we had relatives in Ukraine. My mother lives in Chișinău. I never thought that I would ever see Russia killing children in Ukraine, given the historical bonds, but it is happening.

In the first month of the war, we were paralised.

For people in Moldova, the war feels different. People are hearing the loud explosions, they have children left for studying, they have vacation homes, they have friends staying with them in Chișinău, because they seek shelter.

To us, this war is much worse. It is the worst. And it is still not over. And it hurts me to see people thinking that it is over or that it’s better now.

I can understand going back to our lives, because you cannot constantly live with someone else’s misfortune, but last week Kiev was bombed again, and the events aren’t even the first ones on the news anymore.

People are vacationing, Europe is in vacation. But the war continues.

I fear tanks going into Chișinău, where my mother lives, but not only that. I fear that we are witnessing a war online and we’re not doing enough. I cannot understand how, in these days, such a war is permitted. Nobody is stopping it.”

When the war began, Tatiana took in her home in Paris some refugees from Ukraine and, for the first time, understood her family’s own past.

“It meant reconnecting to my grandparents past, who were deported, and, more than any trip to Siberia, these months I realized what it actually means to leave your home with a bag, a barefoot child and run. These stories started to take shape for me. My mother was born in a gulag, in Siberia.”

She hasn’t written in this period and she doesn’t believe that art should respond to current themes, but should be an intimate act, which you feel or not.

In fact, she does not necessarily plan on continuing her writing career, but expects things to go on in a natural way, such at it was until now.

“If I’ll write another book, it’s ok, if not, it’s still ok. I don’t want to be tied up by just writing. I want to believe that I can do other things as well.”

She does not live in the center of Paris anymore, but is living a quiet life on the outskirts of the city, where she is gardening and dedicates her time to her children.

“Home is where your family is, I believe. But I feel that I will change many places.”

She is part of an international community, more than a French one, and has a realistic perspective on the country in which she lives.

“Not all French people live like the wealthy in Paris. There are very poor regions in France.

This myth that everyone eats croissants for breakfast in France is not true.

There are families that make as much as middle class families in Romania.

I have not felt the French adversity towards immigrants, but it exists. This is a more open area, where you barely feel it, but the far-right has been on everyone’s lips during these elections. This scares me. I am an immigrant and am part of a community of immigrants.

Having this British side in the family, we saw what was happening with Brexit, when nobody thought that it will happen. When you talked to people, nobody was voting pro-Brexit, but eventually, Brexit happened.”

When she is not dedicating her time to her family, the Romanian writer travels a lot to promote her books. She closely follows Romanian contemporary literature, but says that “I’m not doing so well at the chapter of relation ships with other writers, it’s like a wall there.”

She would want for Romanians to appreciate more their fellow’s performances, and stop self-sabotaging.

She has a skeptical view of the world in which we live, through the prism of the terrible war, but manages to see glimpses of hope in common people.

“I’m not an optimistic person, rather the opposite. But I believe that optimism can be helped through some gestures of solidarity, a warm loaf of bread, a warm coat.”

“I don’t believe that we can live outside of community

I still see the kindness in people. I have seen some good people even in these times. I really don’t like it when someone’s good gestures are being doubted. As long as the gesture es made, for PR or otherwise, it’s a good thing.

I believe that people’s kindness comes out once in a while.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Tatiana Țîbuleac, writer: “The world thinks that if someone leaves, they must have a place to call home. In my mind it wasn’t like that.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

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“I felt a strong aggression from the outside, I needed to respond and didn’t know how.”

Alexandra Badea’s story has it’s roots in a Romania that forever marked the generations raised under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s didctatorship and their children.

Born in Bucharest in 1980, Alexandra’s path seemed to be similar to that of the entire youth of those times.

“In the 90’s there was a tendency to assure a child’s future. There were a few ways: Medicine School, Law School, Economics Academy, Polytechnic.” Her parents insisted that she chose one of those paths.

But their daughter had discovered the fascinating universe of theater and felt the need to express through art feelings that she couldn’t express through mathematics.

“Going to school in the Central School in Bucharest, I would see through the window what was happening in the back yard of the Bulandra Theater – Icoanei Garden. I would watch them unload the sets, actors rehearsing.

At one point I skipped school with a friend and actually went inside the theater, during rehearsals, we made friends with the dressers, who gave us the tour of the theater, went inside the actors’ cabins, the costume workshops and I was fascinated with the theater outside of the hall, the one back stage.”

That was the first contact with the theater for a teenager who had never seen a show.

“The first show that I went to was “Procust’s Bed”, directed by Cătălina Buzoianu. I liked the novel and it was in my graduation exam’s curriculum.

That was a very powerful encounter for me, an aesthetical shock and a show that I ended up seeing at least ten times during two years of high school.

That is how I startet going to many of Cătălina Buzoianu’s shows. At one point, I said something stupid to myself: if she can do this, so can I.”

She was always told that she wasn’t talented in writing or any other artistic field and she started to believe it. Directing seemed, nevertheless, a way of bringing together talented people who could express in a show, what she couldn’t otherwise.

“Since tenth grade I felt the need to speak about some things that I felt, like anger, sadness, strong emotions that hurt me. They were a type of response to the aggressive environment in which I was living, both in school and in society.

I thought that I could express through images and words what I felt, to let out all the anger I had inside.

When I said that I wanted to go to journalism, I was discouraged. I could do journalism with anything, but I should graduate from somewhere serious before that. Then I said photography. “What are you going to do at Plastic Arts? you don’t have any talent at drawing.”

This notion of talent kept coming back, that I now reject, I don’t know what talent is.

In France, they don’t talk about talent. I often do workshops with students from theater schools and if I were to mention talent, to say that one is more talented than the other, I think they’d kick me out. The notion does not exist.

They talk about skills, authenticity, singularity and work, not about talent. Theater schools in France are trying to form artists, not just actors that execute something. Artists that express a personality, that have the courage to express a point of view – I think that this should be more stressed in Romanian theater schools.

Us, in the East, tie talent to something very religious, something given, with which you are born. I disagree. If we were to talk about talent, I think it is something you can educate.

I see it as a muscle you keep training through everything that you see, through discussions, films, life experiences.”

As per the deal she made with her father, Alexandra had to get into the Academy of Economic Studies first, in order to get permission to try getting into theater direction, at UNATC. That’s how she got both an economics diploma, and a director’s diploma.

20 years later, Alexandra is today one of the most appreciated emerging theater directors in France, but also Romania. The true way of expression that led her into the French cultural elite was playwriting.

After the two universities graduated in Romania, she mastered in “Theater aesthetics and theory” in Sorbonne and settled, without intention, in Paris.

She directed her first shows on small stages in Paris, with little budget and friends rehearsing without pay.

“I did a show – Family Stories – we played it several times. I didn’t understand the system. It was very hard.

In France there are no ensembles, the director has a company, it applies to state subventions and searches for co-producers in institutionalized theatres, where there are only technicians and administrative staff working. The artistic staff is project-based”

“In France, a director does one show per year, if not one in 2-3 years. 70% of his activity is administrative.”

In total, there have been 10 years of efforts until now, in which she has not made a living out of theater. She did stories for RFI, worked with children in schools, taught theater or earned scholarships.

In the meantime, she was invited by several Romanian theaters to do shows based on plays already written. But she felt that something was missing.

“I felt like an outsider in Romania. In France, people would ask me about my accent.

My wish was to write about what I felt and I couldn’t find a play that expressed what I wanted.”

“And it happened during a visit in Romania, in that strange time between Christmas and New Year’s. It was a highly autobiographical text, a collage of scenes, monologues, lists of instructions.

It was speaking on the impossibility to adapt to a society or the other. The impossibility to assimilate the rules of society, imposed in the family.”

The text became her first play, Mode D’Emploi, (Instructions Manual), that she later sent, by mail, to a famous publishing house in France – Arche Editeur.

Only a year later she heard back.

“They called to say that they wanted to meet me and to ask if I had any other texts. They said that they wanted to publish me.

When I left the meeting, I was doubtful, I thought that they would change their minds, much like many were saying that they would come to see my shows and never showed up.”

In 2009, her first three plays – Mode D’Emploi, Controle d’identité, about the refugees that came in France in 2005, during Nicolas Sarkozy’s time, and Burnout, about working conditions in companies – were published in a single volume by Arche Editeur, made into shows by various directors all over France.

“It was a relief. My life totally changed. Theaters started opening their doors.”

And this was only the beginning. The young woman who was constantly told in school that she didn’t have talent in writing, received in 2013 The Grand Prize for Dramatic Writing, offered by the French Ministry of Culture, for the play Comminution, published at Arche Editeur.

“Nobody expected me winning this award. That includes me. I was in Mexico, I didn’t even attend the awards ceremony. “

Comminution is an X-ray of French society and was the result of a year’s work of research, during which Alexandra interviewed numerous immigrants from a small town on the outskirts of Lyon.

“Research is an essential step. I am interested in the way the wounds of history still have repercussions on today’s generations.

I met the first Algerian workers that settled here, they are living in precarious conditions, working for very little, sacrificing their lives to support those back home.

I met the wives of the workers that came here in the ’70’s, all they did was raise children, and now, at 60 years old, they were taking these language lessons, trying to learn French.”

“I understood globalization and how a decision taken here can affect the lives of people all over the world.”

The play was translated to English, German, Romanian, Portuguese and has become her most performed play.

She then wrote two novels (Zone d’amour prioritaire, 2014; Tu marches au bord du monde, 2020) and film scripts, also directing her first short films.

“I realized that my writing rhythm is faster then the rhythm of doing a show. I feel the best when I’m writing, I feel free, without administrative obstacles.”

Her own uncertain status in a foreign country, the tense relationship with her home country, but also her interest for history’s untold stories, birthed a courageous writer, noticed as a political theater author in France, on themes of corporations, globalization, colonization and surveillance.

And Alexandra Badea’s desire to tell these kind of stories grew even more since 2013, when she became a French citizen.

“It was a naturalization ceremony in which we were told that from then on, we must commit to this country’s history, with it’s glory moments and her shady zones.”

“And that perhaps, at some point, in case of war, you will have to take arms against your own country.”

That was the time she decided to read more about colonization and post-colonization. And through her art, she has brought to light scenes that were less known from France’s history.

Wajdi Mouawad, a well-known director who did George Enescu’s Oedipus opera in 2021, gave her the immense chance to do a show at one of the 5 national theaters in France – The La Colline Theatre in Paris, which he also manages.

And Alexandra Badea chose to stage a trilogy inspired by France’s history. While working on this project, she took many walks through The Père Lachaise Cemetery, right next to The La Colline Theatre.

“The first part is about a massacre of Senegalese soldiers, who came to France in World War 2, and actually liberated some territories. At the end of the war, France owed them their war payment, they were given a part and promised the rest when they returned to their home countries.

When they got back home and asked for their rights, they were shot, it was a massacre. Their numbers and even their names remain unknown, they were buried in a commune grave.

Everyone was astounded, the story had been unknown.”

The second part had it’s premiere at the prestigious Avignon Theater Festival, bringing to light an instance of several Algerians that were thrown into the Senne after asking for their rights, and in the third one she spoke about children of immigrants, brought to repopulate several rural areas of France.

The trilogy has been played even in integral shows and had great success, being played in numerous shows.

We found Alexandra, the high school student who snook into the Bulandra Theater, backstage of one of the most important theaters in France, this time as a French director, with Romanian origins.

A few steps from the theater, in the window of a bookshop, there are some of her awarded books.

But, beyond awards, Alexandra Badea’s shows and plays mean much more than prestige. They are the voice of society’s invisible people.

In Romania she wrote about the Pogrom in Iasi, in the play Perfect Composed, played at The Radu Stanca National Theater in Sibiu.

She is also equally interested in trans-generational psychology, how information is transmitted from one generation to the next and how we manage to let it go. That is what she will address in her future show – Exile – that will have it’s premiere this autumn at the Bucharest National Theater.

“We were taught to survive by not speaking our minds, by adapting, sneaking, sacrificing some things.

I don’t know if it’s a Romanian problem, maybe it’s universal, but in Romania it hurt more.”

I have wanted to write something on this theme for a while now. I want to talk about exile and the relation-ship with Romania, about anger and love, which we all feel, the desire to leave, the desire to come back, the impossibility to adapt here. But also about inheritance – education, obstacles from our families and from school.”

Alexandra Badea is settled in Paris for almost 20 years and, at least for the moment, she can not imagine living somewhere else.

I don’t see myself as an immigrant. It was an experience on which I stopped. But I’m moving, I’m not in one place.”

“I feed off cultural influences, I live in a neighborhood close to Gare de l’Est, there are African barber shops, there is a place called Little Turkey, then there is the Asian area. When I’m in Bucharest, I miss this mixture, especially in the artistic plane.

Paris is one of the few places in the world where you can almost anything being made in the world – in matters of film, theater, art shows – like an independent film from Guatemala or Cameroon.

I feed off this as a human being, not even as an artist. I need this energy. Paris is a source of energy.

She is a Knight of Arts and Letters in France, the country that has opened the doors to a universal culture for her, but she constantly comes back to her home country, with which she is trying to reconcile through theater.

“I want to speak to the Romanian audience as well. It is important, even vital to me.”

“I can’t explain why. I don’t know if I am needed, but I have this need to make something in Romania.

I said to myself that if I told untold stories from France’s history, I have to talk about the untold stories from Romania’s history.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Alexandra Badea, writer and director: “I am interested in the way the wounds of history still have repercussions on today’s generations.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.