The name Gigi Căciuleanu is synonymous with contemporary dance, both in Romania and worldwide. Alongside his teacher, Miriam Răducanu, he built forms of expression through movement at a time when Romanians lacked freedom. He then amazed huge names in dance, such as the Soviet ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and the German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch.

He founded the first National Center for Contemporary Dance in France in Rennes and led the Santiago de Chile National Ballet.

He has lived in Paris for 50 years but has also left his mark on contemporary dance in Romania, both before and after the Revolution.

I met him in the French capital, in the Montmartre district where he lives, and I discovered fascinating stories, from his departure from Romania and periods of financial insecurity, where he ate only jam on dry bread for three months, to career-defining encounters with Pierre Cardin, Astor Piazzolla, Jean Michel Jarre, and Maya Plisetskaya.

***

In June 1940, when Romania was ordered to cede Bessarabia as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Gigi Căciuleanu’s grandparents and parents caught the last train to Bucharest.

“My grandmother didn’t take any jewelry, nothing; she only took the Bible and a cactus. If I were to write all my memoirs, I would title it The Bible and the Cactus. She had the Bible since 1900; she would read from it when we were children and she cherished it very much. The way my grandmother read to us made the Bible seem like an adventure book.

We all lived in the basement of a house on Eremia Grigorescu Street, and I was lucky to grow up between the two gardens, Icoanei and Ioanid. In my day, Ioanid was called Pușkin Park. We used to swim in the pond there.”

Gigi Căciuleanu first came into contact with dance when he was only 4 years old. It happened at a ballet school on Frumoasă Street in Bucharest, near George Enescu’s house.

“If you were to look through the keyhole into Alice’s Wonderland, you would see something. You know it’s Wonderland, but you don’t know exactly what it’s like. Dance is not just dance; it’s a necessity. It’s a visceral necessity, just as poetry is a necessity. And for me, poetry and dance and drawing lines are very connected.

My mother took me to ballet for two reasons: one – I was terribly mischievous, and two – my mother would have wanted to be a ballerina, but it was not considered appropriate at the time in our family for a girl to be a ballerina; ballerinas were considered unserious. Unable to be a ballerina, my mother became a botanist. She was very in love with plants. A plant is a dance. It is a line that develops, blooms, has a story. A blade of grass also has extraordinary strength; it comes out of the asphalt without any problem. Put me under the asphalt to see if I can get out. No! I don’t know how the blade of grass makes its way through.

Dance fascinated me in the sense that it hit me on the head; I was very scared because there were all kinds of young ladies who knew much more than I did. I was 4 years old; what does a child know at 4? I started to cry, and a blond, beautiful, very intelligent teacher, Nuți Dona, took me in her arms, and I asked her to marry me. Haha. Then she started training me.

She said: ‘Forget the figures and look: I’m here with you, you’re in an empty lot, you’re playing with a ball, you break a window, the neighbor whose window you broke comes out and scolds you, you answer him, and you are between the ball and the one who scolds you. You dance however you want.’ I don’t know what I danced for her, but I really liked the idea. That was freedom.”

He then continued to go to the dance school, and the meeting that was to decisively mark his artistic path was with the dancer and choreographer Miriam Răducanu.

“Miriam became our teacher when I entered the second cycle, which means at 14 years old. And suddenly, some subjects were added, one of which was called The Actor’s Art. I really liked it; at one point, I wanted to quit dance and become an actor, I realized I could do more things as an actor, and I really liked the idea.

She gave us dance classes, but it was not allowed to say “modern dance”; jazz was frowned upon as modern music. She told us: ‘Look, you are allowed to improvise, but not chaotically, but with some very precise tasks, just like jazz musicians do, she already pronounced the word jazz, which was taboo. Or like very talented musicians do in a Mozart symphony; they have a moment of freedom where they deviate from the written symphony and are allowed to add some nuances that are their own. I want to work on these nuances with you, in which you have the right to be free, but going through the experience of improvising with some very precise tasks.’

With Miriam, I realized that dance and the art of acting do not exclude each other but blend very well. She was the first dance-actor I met.

Together, the two created the famous late-night shows, which took place at the Țăndărică Theater in Bucharest in the late ’60s. The Nocturnes combined music, dance, poetry, and acting, and the interdisciplinary construction was something revolutionary at the time.

“She worked a lot with the theater, with Gina Patrichi, with Virgil Ogășanu. Virgil Ogășanu was part of the first Nocturne we did. He performed a monologue from Gogol’s The Government Inspector, which he had worked on with Andrei Șerban.

Many of the dances I did with Miriam came out of improvisation. Before the Nocturnes, we danced a lot in people’s homes. Whoever had a bigger living room would welcome us. People would sit on chairs as if at a theater.

How was this freedom possible in that regime where Romanians lacked precisely freedom?

“Romanians are Romanians; jokes saved us. Don’t forget that we are in a country of jokes, even if some people would turn you in for this. We always laughed at many things, and Romanians have always been very Latin. No matter how much they try to restrain us, we remain Latin.

Inspired by Brâncuși, Miriam had at one point created a dance called Flight; it was very static, only on an oscillation, the body only had some inclinations. And she was criticized by her colleagues at the opera, who said, ‘What kind of flight is that; in flight, you flap your arms.’ And I went to her and said: ‘Madam, you should know that I am very upset by what people are saying about your dance.’

And she told me: ‘You ask them where the feathers are on Brâncuși’s Bird. Don’t argue with them; just present artistic arguments.’ Miriam is very different from me. Miriam polished her dances, just as Brâncuși polished his sculptures. And I was very much about the immediate moment; I could change a dance in three seconds. During the Nocturnes, I always said that she was the pretzel, and I was dancing, sneaking through the holes of the pretzel.”

When the Nocturnes, theater plays, concerts, and opera shows ended, young people from Bucharest who were interested in the courageous side of art would gather at Preoteasa, the Students’ Cultural Center. There, great Romanian artists would give free rein to their imagination and improvise in a captivating way for the audience.

“We improvised crazily; all kinds of jazz musicians would come, the Berindei brothers, Jancy Korossy, Johnny Raducanu. It was a dialogue where I didn’t care about the way they played and what that was called in music, and they didn’t care what the movement we were doing was called. The audience would come like crazy for this. A lot of young people would come,” Gigi Căciuleanu now recalls.

Alongside Miriam Răducanu, Gigi Căciuleanu participated in the first international festivals. When the Bulandra Theater, with Liviu Ciulei as director, presented Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival, Gigi Căciuleanu was dancing in the festival’s underground: “one day, we saw Marin Sorescu and Ion Caramitru come in and join us, in a good way, and they created a moment within our show. It was spontaneous and fit perfectly.”

Poetry, painting, and dance have always had echoes in Gigi Căciuleanu’s dance. He fell in love with the paintings of Kandinsky and Aivazovsky, which gave him the courage not to impose barriers on himself, to build forms in continuous motion, without a contour.

“What is choreography? It is a combination of movements that you invent. You invent the movements and their combination. I make a big distinction between a choreographer and an arranger. It’s like in music; there are people who invent things and others who arrange them. A lot of choreographers call themselves choreographers without being choreographers. They take things from here and there and glue them together.”

Gigi Căciuleanu left Romania in 1973 and settled in France, after a journey through Russia, Germany, Greece, and Belgium, refusing an invitation to move to America.

His meeting with the great German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch gave him the confidence that he could start over in a new world.

“After leaving the country so many times with Miriam, I told myself I couldn’t wait for visas for who knows how long. I was convinced I had something to say, and I couldn’t say it at the opera, where I had to do what I was told. I didn’t want to go to Moscow, but Miriam told me, ‘Go, boy, to the Russians, and learn the trade!'”

And did you go to the Bolshoi Theater?

“Yes, I stayed for one season, but that was enough for me; it was an extraordinary technical apprenticeship. It was classical, academic dance, but with more freedom. I had three extraordinary teachers; if a double jump was done, we would do a triple. I absolutely loved this technical challenge. And we had the opportunity to sneak in to the soloists, we would open the door and slip in. Maya Plisetskaya, Ekaterina Maximova, Vladimir Vasiliev were there; you couldn’t even touch them.”

He was not interested in staying in Moscow and continued to see the world through international competitions, along with his dance partner, Ruxandra Racoviță.

“We won the only contemporary choreography competition in Germany at that time. I won once, I returned to Romania, and Ruxandra told me: ‘Căciu, let’s do another competition, so we can get out again, so the world can see us.’

And we did a Romanian Bolero, the two of us with a third acting character, Dan Mastacan, who had some acting passages, and Raluca Ianegic, who presented a kind of flamenco, a symbol of death, as I was reading a lot of Lorca at the time. That dance piece won first prize a second time. It had never happened before that the same people would win in a competition two years in a row.

Pina Bausch had been the laureate of the same competition a few years earlier. I said that if I won the prize a second time, I would stay there. Dan Mastacan left for Paris immediately and had an extraordinary career in the world of film.

I stayed in Germany because Pina invited me to join her company. She was the director of the Essen School of Arts. She proposed that I work on choreographies with the people she had, her students, some of whom would later become very well known. Susanne Linke was there.

I had the extraordinary chance to work with those people; I created ten pieces with them. And those productions went on tour. Pina combined them with her pieces and my pieces. So I had moments when I wasn’t dancing and I would watch what she was doing, and she did the same.

That’s when I saw what a great dancer Pina was, and every time I went and said: ‘Pina, you are a divine dancer,’ even though she was like an animal, a combination of Salvador Dalí’s dinosaur and a giraffe in flames.

In the meantime, I convinced Ruxandra to return to Germany, and we left with her for Greece. We bought two boat tickets, without having anything to eat.”

The projects in Greece did not materialize, so Ruxandra Racoviță returned to Romania, but Gigi stayed for another 3 months in Greece, on the island of Hydra near Athens, where a Romanian woman they had met owned a house.

“In 40-degree heat, I ate nothing but dry biscotte with orange marmalade for three months, which Mrs. Ralu Manu had in the house, as she was on vacation. I literally exterminated that cupboard of biscotte—some slices of dry bread. And I would spread a little marmalade on it to make it last. Since then, I can’t stand to see biscotte; I can’t…”

He finally managed to get to Paris, a city that continues to captivate him today, after 50 years.

“When I arrived in Paris in June-July, the last thing on my mind was America. I even slept on benches by the Seine many times; it was possible back then, it’s not like now. Dan Mastacan had left to make a film in Germany, and I had nowhere to stay. But I said that I wasn’t leaving here.”

Now he met us in the Montmartre district, near the Sacre Coeur church, where he lives. He is 78 years old, and dance, cats, and poetry are now his main interests. He perfectly remembers the adventure of settling in France, without any source of income, trying to work at a cabaret while having just requested political asylum.

Ruxandra Racoviță joined him in this madness, and the great American ballerina Rosella Hightower, director of the Nancy Theater, gave them a chance: “she told us she had only one position for a dancer, but she would cut it in half, and we would split the salary. That’s how we got to Nancy, where later, she gave me the direction of the ballet there. Dan Mastacan was my assistant. And Ruxandra was a star dancer.

I stayed there for 5 years. From that company of 30 people, I selected 10 with whom I worked at night, and we then went on tour through France. Unpaid, that’s what we wanted. That’s how the French Ministry of Culture got to know us. And, at one point, I said, ‘God, I really want to do only this; I’m not interested in doing those ballets anymore, which, in fact, I didn’t even know how to do.’

The Ministry of Culture offered me Rennes or Montpellier. I wanted Rennes because it’s closer to Paris. I always gravitate towards Paris. I love Paris, no matter what it’s like. I got to Rennes and stayed there for 15 years. That’s where I founded the first National Center for Contemporary Dance.”

Through the actor Dan Mastacan, who had become the assistant to the famous designer and cultural figure Pierre Cardin, Gigi Căciuleanu received a proposal from Cardin to go on a world tour.

“I was on tour with a show in London, and Pierre Cardin came into the theater and saw me. He said he wanted me. I came by bus and showed Pierre Cardin what we were working on clandestinely at night in Nancy, and he said: ‘I’ll take you with this show.’ And that’s how he gave us tours all over the world: Japan, China, the United States, and a lot in South America.”

Pierre Cardin also connected him with one of the greatest Soviet ballerinas in history, Maya Plisetskaya, whom the young Gigi had only secretly watched at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

“Pierre Cardin calls me and says: ‘Don’t you want to meet Maya Plisetskaya? I’d like to introduce you to her and have her see you dance.’ And I said, ‘Of course, I’ll take the train immediately.’ I go, I arrive at the theater in Paris, and I dance to Ray Charles’s music. Maya likes it very much; she even wrote in her diary ‘I met a brilliant Romanian.’ She says: ‘Don’t you want to teach me some movements?’ I say: ‘Madam, these movements are not learned in three seconds behind a door.’

Years passed since then, and Pierre Cardin called me again: ‘I absolutely want to make a gift show for Maya, and I thought of you.’ Among the proposed titles, I chose The Madwoman of Chaillot; it seemed to fit my personality and hers the most. We were going to put on the show at his theater, Espace Cardin, in the heart of Paris; for me, it was a huge deal. And I said, ‘But how?’ And he said: ‘Maya will come to Rennes, and you will work there.’ And Maya came.

I was late at the station. Rennes is towards the ocean, 80 km from the ocean, so there were many seagulls.

I arrive at the station, the platforms were empty, like in the paintings of Delvaux (n.r. Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux), who drew stations with traffic lights, where there are some naked ladies.

‘Maya, please forgive me, I had rehearsals, let me help you with your luggage.’ She was silent, nothing, she just stood there with her braids in the wind. Then she says: ‘I know how it is. But please show me the movements you have thought of for me.’

And the improvisation starts again, of course. You come huffing and puffing, sweating, because it’s the huge star right there and you’re late? And I start outlining it for her on that platform; I had absolutely nothing prepared, but, anyway, I had Miriam Răducanu’s training. I put on the tape with The Madwoman of Chaillot and danced for her. She didn’t say a word. She let me go through hell on that platform, I stopped at one point because I couldn’t go on, and she says: ‘Yes, I liked it. But I have one single request. Don’t you dare do it any other way than how you did it here.’

Were you able to reproduce it then?

“The hell I was! No, but it didn’t even matter anymore. She didn’t want to see what I had. She wanted to see that my joints would hold up, because otherwise, she could have gotten on the next train and left.

We did the show at the Bolshoi, we did it in Japan. When we arrived at the Bolshoi, it was exactly the day the Russian White House was burning; the government building was on fire, everything was closing on the streets at 9, and Yeltsin gave an extraordinary dispensation so that Maya’s show could be performed at 4.”

In 1993, he founded the Gigi Căciuleanu company in Paris, with Dan Mastacan and Ruxandra Racoviță. At the same time, he returned to Romanian soil as a guest and contributed to the growth of new generations of Romanian dancers.

“Vava Ștefănescu, Răzvan Mazilu, Ștefan Lupu, Arcadie Rusu, Ioana Marchidan, Lari Georgescu – they all were part of my company, and now they are all something.

First and foremost, I taught them that they had to be themselves. That no matter how strict the choreography is, and I work very strictly on choreography, the choreographies are written precisely so that from this writing you can burst out when you want to. But you must have a thought-out foundation. Take a Mozart symphony. Yehudi Menuhin’s genius is not seen because he is interpreting something else, but because he plays it the way he plays it. To be free to be who you are—that is the great art.

To be ‘authentic,’ I was even called ‘Mr. Authentic,’ because I used the word often.

The choreography of the sea is written. There are physical laws. You don’t play with them. But look at the sea; you can stand all day long and you don’t get tired of looking at it. Or the fire in the fireplace. And yet, there are very clear physical laws that direct those things. That would be choreography.

What does Romania mean to you?

I don’t make a distinction between Romania and France. If I stayed in Paris, it’s because it looked a lot like Romania. It seemed to me that I had come home.

But what were the similarities?

There is a certain freedom of thought. There were also our connections with France, Cioran, Ionesco, Enescu. And it seemed like a terribly natural connection, and I spoke French from a very young age.

Romanians are very French, in fact, and the French are very Romanian. There are differences because we had different destinies.”

This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

The post Gigi Căciuleanu, a life dedicated to dance: “Dance is not just dance. It’s a visceral necessity.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Who would have thought that 35 years after the fall of communism, Romanians would still be seeking healing? Cornelia Oncioiu is part of a generation of children raised in Romanian working-class families who, hardened by the shortages and horrors of the communist regime, didn’t know that the affection they showed their own children could matter more than what they put on the table.

Born in the commune of Dărmănești in Bacău County, at her mother’s insistence, she moved to Cluj when she was only 13 years old.

Today, she is one of the voices of the Paris National Opera, and her professional life is divided between the Opera Garnier and the Opéra Bastille, the performance halls that any artist or opera lover dreams of. She has shared the stage with international stars such as German soprano Diana Damrau and French baritone Ludovic Tézier and has worked with important directors like Robert Wilson and Andrei Șerban.

But her story is not that of a diva. Having lived in the French capital for over 20 years, mezzo-soprano Cornelia Oncioiu’s success is an example of courage, perseverance, and healing through music.

***

We met Cornelia Oncioiu right next to the Opera Garnier in Paris. I immediately noticed her Transylvanian accent, but she told us she was actually born in Bacău. Destiny led her to Transylvania, the Banat region, and then to France, so her Romanian has no trace of a Moldovan accent.

“I lived with my parents until I was 13, and when I was 13, my mother said: you’re moving to Cluj! We had some relatives there, and there was a family wedding. Since she couldn’t leave, she said I should. I didn’t want to go, I cried, I hated the idea. But many times, life has shown me that even if I didn’t want something, it happened so that I would get to where I was meant to be.

Do you believe in destiny, that a certain path is written for you?

Yes, I clearly do, because I have lived it, I have seen it happen so many times.

“After I finished 8th grade, I enrolled in the Mining, Oil, and Geology section at the Racoviță High School in Cluj. And it so happened that I met a classmate who was enrolled at the Cluj School of Popular Arts. We both loved to sing, and she told me I could enroll too.

I went with my uncle to register, and the date of the exam fell exactly when I was sick; I had a throat infection. I was treating myself with walnut shell tea and onion tea.

At that time, I sang pop music; I didn’t sing classical music at all, I didn’t know what it was all about. I had no musical knowledge. In Dărmănești, I had an extraordinary teacher with whom I did four years of kobza. And he also played the violin fantastically; you can imagine what it means to have a teacher who plays the violin in Dărmănești, a very small commune! But I never even thought I could have a career in music. I never even dreamed of it. I didn’t know what talent was. I just liked to sing. That’s all.

At the exam for the School of Popular Arts, I sang ‘Nu-mi lua iubirea dacă pleci’ (Don’t Take My Love If You Leave), as I was a big fan of Angela Similea. I sang the first verse and the chorus, and the teacher said, ‘Thank you, that’s enough.’

Of course, I was inhibited; I thought I must have disappointed him, that he didn’t like it, that he wouldn’t take me. And then I experienced one of the most exceptional moments of my life. There was such a great silence that it seemed to last an eternity. And then he said: ‘A voice like that, you hear it once every 25 years.’ And that left me speechless because I didn’t expect it at all; it shocked me.

I think that based on those words, I actually built my career.

And I think I latched onto that. And my younger brother, Călin, was and still is my biggest supporter; he was by my side unconditionally, I always felt him close, even at a distance. He lived and continues to live my successes and failures with the same intensity.”

Deeply moved, with tears in her eyes, Cornelia Oncioiu tells us how a teacher can save the life of a child otherwise condemned to a life without opportunities. “Mr. Valeriu Sorescu was an extraordinarily interesting man; he gave me everything, he shaped me, he opened my eyes. He, with an imposing stature like Pavarotti, came to my school to talk for me because I wasn’t doing well in math.”

The same singing teacher later encouraged her to study at the Conservatory when her parents were calling her home to Dărmănești.

“After finishing high school, I joined the Cluj Opera choir because I needed a job. I had a lot of financial difficulties because I had no help, no one.

My mother told me: ‘You don’t have money, come home.’ The concept of music didn’t exist for her. And I said, no, I want to continue making music, and I stayed. My singing teacher told me at the beginning: ‘You have to do classical music; you have a voice for opera music, leave pop music. You won’t do much with it.’ I still wanted to do pop music, until in my third year of singing, he gave me an aria from Azucena, from Trovatore (n.r. The Troubadour, by Giuseppe Verdi).

This woman, Azucena, mistakenly threw her own child into the fire instead of the other one, wanting revenge. All of this had a very big impact on me because it overlapped with events from my personal life that were very significant, very painful, and so, I immediately understood the text. And I said: ‘If this is opera, this is what I want to do!’

It wasn’t complicated for someone with my experiences. When you come from a family with an alcoholic father, with a mother who yells from morning to night, the emotional burden is always within you.

The choir master of the Cluj Opera was very favorably impressed and said, ‘Yes, indeed, that is a true mezzo-soprano voice. When there is a competition, you will come to the competition and you will be part of our choir, if you want.’

I worked there for 3 years, until 1997.”

In parallel, she participated in and won the most important competitions in Romania, such as Hariclea Darclée, Eugenia Moldoveanu, Sabin Drăgoi, or Ionel Perlea. She began to build a career as a soloist, enjoying the trust and support of the great Romanian soprano Mariana Nicolesco. In 1997, she moved to Timișoara, where she was admitted to the Conservatory, and continued to perform as a soloist at the Cluj or Timișoara Opera, and to sing on the stage of the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest.

“In the 2001-2002 season, when I was finishing my studies, I applied for competitions at the operas in Bucharest, Cluj, and Timișoara and had passed the stages at all of them. But, at the same time, as a result of a project with the French Cultural Center in Timișoara, I was going to have an audition in Bucharest for Monique Devaux, who is still the director of the Auditorium at the Louvre.

I traveled all night by train from Timișoara to Bucharest to have the audition in the morning at the Opera, in front of Mrs. Devaux. I knew it was for a lady from France, but I didn’t know who she was.”

She waited all morning on the stairs of the Bucharest Opera to be let in for the audition, and the wait was worth it, as that was the meeting that would radically mark her career.

“She liked it very much and wrote a letter of recommendation for me to the Paris Opera Academy, which is a kind of school, but the admitted people are like employees, in fact. We had teachers, pianists, free training, and our duty was to sing on stage if requested, or to be understudies for some shows.

There were only 5 spots and 250 applicants. When I got there and saw that, I started to tremble and said, well, now it’s life and death. When you put me in a situation like that, I go and show everything I can; nothing can stand in my way, I don’t see, I don’t hear, I disappear into another universe.

I got in here, and at the same time, the competition at the Bucharest Opera was finishing, and I said yes, I choose Paris!

It wasn’t the money that attracted me, but the study; I wanted to learn as much as possible, to be in an environment where I had as much high-level information as possible, which I have to admit I didn’t have in Romania.

How many years did you study at the Academy here?

Two years.

And what happened after that?

Well, even before I was admitted to the Academy, they already offered me work. I did my first production as an understudy, right here at Garnier, with the role of Cornelia from Giulio Cesare (n.r. opera by Handel). The Opera also helped me with accommodation because I had only found a place for the period when I was starting the Academy. But until then, I had nowhere to stay. They found me an apartment right across from the Opéra Bastille.

Back then, there was a FNAC right in front. And they had the habit, as they do now, when there is an opera premiere, of highlighting all the records of that opera. And I didn’t know who those artists were, because at home we didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have anything. I knew nothing about Mark Minkowski (n.r. French conductor) and a lot of other greats from here. I had the cast list, but it was only when I went into FNAC and saw Mark Minkowski, Mark Minkowski, Mark Minkowski everywhere, and all the people who were in the show, that I broke out in a sweat and said: ‘I can’t believe it, I’m going to go rehearse with these people tomorrow.’”

This year, Cornelia Oncioiu celebrates 21 years since her debut at the Opéra Bastille in Dialogues des carmélites. In all this time, her CV has become impressive, being a constant presence in the productions of the Parisian opera – Giulio Cesare, Elektra, Louise, The Barber of Seville, Madama Butterfly, Parsifal, Lucia di Lammermoor, Traviata, Le Soulier de satin are just a few of them. She has also sung at the Bordeaux National Opera in Rusalka, at the Grand Théâtre d’Avignon in Rusalka and Peter Grimes, and at the Marseille Opera in Madama Butterfly. Noticed by specialists in Paris, she has been invited to be part of performances staged in Amsterdam, Geneva, Monte Carlo, Tokyo, Santiago de Chile, and Shanghai.

“It’s not enough to sing beautifully or well; you have to be very responsive. That is, the moment you are told something, you have to immediately deliver what is asked of you. This is very important. Whether it comes from a conductor or a director. If you don’t react immediately to do what is said, in general, you are not given a second chance. In opera, at this level, no one really has patience with you.”

Although she was performing an episodic role, a critic from the New York Times noticed her in Traviata, alongside the main soloists – “Cornelia Oncioiu brings rich mezzo tones to the few lines she has to sing,” the New York Times article states.

Through music, she has seen different corners of the world, but she has collaborated least with Romania, being better known in France, her adopted country, than in her native country. In fact, this is the first interview she has given to a Romanian publication since settling in France.

How did you manage to integrate into everything that the world of Parisian opera means, beyond the artistic aspect?

It wasn’t easy for me. The difficulty comes from the difference in culture. The environment is not the same. We Romanians are more open; we get straight to the point. They are more diplomatic, they discuss things differently, they never say things to your face.

It’s hard at the beginning from a human point of view, until you make friends, until you get used to it. What most determined me to stay here was the cultural level and diversity.

If I had stayed in Romania, I don’t know what my life would have been like, but here I managed to buy an apartment, I managed to do so many extraordinary shows, to meet so many people, to sing under the baton of so many important conductors, to discover the world, to see art, to discover literature. You don’t feel like going back as long as you can benefit from all of this.

It’s true that for a soloist, as in my case, it’s very difficult because you always have to be well prepared, you always have to be at a high level. Any problem that arises puts you at a disadvantage and can quickly bring you down.

Whereas if you’re in a troupe in Romania, you don’t have the same problems. In general, you stay until retirement. It’s true that here you don’t have the same security or stability, but you have a lot of different soloists all the time, some of the world’s immense artists, the repertoire is very varied, the level of the orchestra is completely different, with extraordinary guest conductors.

Which work dynamic do you think is healthier, the one in Romania with all the artists employed or this one where artists are independent and work on a project basis?

I’m sorry, I don’t know if someone will accuse me or won’t like my answer, but I definitely opt for the second one. As a soloist, you realize you have to maintain your voice constantly, to work, to study. When the competition is high, of course, it makes you study and be prepared, because otherwise, someone else will take your place. This is also valid for directing, not just for soloists.”

Among the great directors she has worked with at the Paris National Opera are the American Robert Wilson and the Romanian Andrei Șerban.

“For me, Robert Wilson will remain hard to match, from many points of view. With him, I did Madama Butterfly at the Opéra Bastille, in 2009 and 2014, with me in the role of Suzuki. He insisted on the idea that when you perform and address someone, the feeling you want to convey doesn’t just go to the front. The energy circulates in multiple directions: up, down, front, back. If there’s a partner behind you, you don’t see them, but you have to feel them; you have to feel the energy with them, to make a connection with them.

A lot of soloists go on stage and care very little about their partners; they only focus on themselves, on shining, and that’s not okay.

With Andrei Șerban, I have some fabulous memories; I really liked Andrei! We are a bit made of the same dough. We both have a kind of simplicity and a direct style of communication, we understood each other very well.

I did L’italiana in Algerie at Garnier in 2010. And before that, Lucia di Lammermoor at Bastille. Andrei is spontaneous, he’s intelligent, he’s modest, he’s creative, free, he’s human, very human. He’s also charming, but it seems to me that the charm in people like this also comes from the fact that they have kept something of their childhood somewhere, that innocence in their soul.

What are the greatest satisfactions you have in your work?

The most satisfying moments are when you have partners you are on the same wavelength with and there is intensity. Intensity in emotions, in dedication, in responsiveness. It’s nice when your partner gives you a true look in the eye and isn’t the type who looks through you and sings their part, thinking about what they have to do.

With what partners have you experienced this?

Diana Damrau comes to mind now, for example, when we sang Traviata together, Sonya Yoncheva.

Then, there’s also the joy that comes from self-transcendence – when you manage to do difficult things that you never dreamed of.”

Having left a country that was still learning what democracy was and arriving in the heart of a culture that puts artistic freedom first, Cornelia Oncioiu has managed to build an international career through her own efforts and by eliminating any cultural barriers in her path.

The Paris National Opera, a benchmark of innovation and modernity, continues to work on dismantling clichés and brings multidisciplinary productions to the public, in which classic texts are sometimes combined with contemporary dance, minimalist scenography, and an international cast.

While street breakdancers were invited on stage there alongside the opera soloists in the revolutionary production Les Indes Galantes, the Bucharest National Opera was still trying to recover after numerous cases of corruption and the famous racism scandal in 2016 when Romanian artists demanded the removal of foreign collaborators and booed the great ballerina Alina Cojocaru, along with her partner, choreographer Johan Kobborg.

This year, the Bucharest National Opera again blundered with a campaign trying to “educate” the public – “How we dress at the opera” – presenting a hypersexualized and clichéd image of a fashion model wearing an evening gown. In contrast, at the Bastille, given that it is a common activity for them, many French people go to the opera directly from work, wearing casual clothes.

“I have been here for 20 years; it is a huge creative force, and the mix of classic and contemporary has become normal. But the audience here is much more open than in Romania.

In Germany, the role of Elvira from Don Giovanni was played this year by a man (n.r. the Brazilian Bruno de Sa), and this stirred numerous comments on the internet. What’s the problem? I mean, who are we to judge? And why should we judge? How does it affect us?

What do you think is the role of opera today, when the world is so dependent on digital technology, and the attention span for a subject lasts only a few seconds?

The role of opera is to make you live experiences other than the ones you are used to; it helps you see various stories from the past, many of which are still valid today, you see how people reacted back then, to know other cultures, other behaviors.

I believe that at the opera, you can experience feelings that I don’t know if you can experience in other forms of art. Of course, you can be moved in front of a painting, in front of a sculpture, or at a theater play, but when the vocal intensity is mixed with music, with scenography, with directing, with dance, with the text, with poetry, it is difficult for that to be equaled by anything else.

I’m curious if your parents got to see you singing on the stage of the Paris Opera.

Yes, my parents came to Paris a few times, and my father, before he died, came a few times and saw me in Paris, Nantes, and Bucharest. And my mother has come a few times.

My mother still lives in Dărmănești; she knows I’m here, but my parents were never very interested in my career, what I do professionally, my evolution. However, I am grateful because they gave me an education and what was necessary in my childhood. Now, as an adult, I have also understood the difficulties they went through.

What else connects you to Romania? Do you still visit your country, are you interested in what’s happening there?

Yes, of course, I’m interested. I was very affected and very preoccupied with the elections; I never in my life wanted a president to be elected as much as I wanted Nicușor Dan to be elected now. Oh my god, what a relief I felt when I saw he was elected. I think I would have cried for days if it hadn’t been so.

It’s interesting that you’re so interested, even though you no longer live there.

Well, you know why? (with tears in her eyes) I want to cry when I think of all the people who worked and struggled before so that we could have what we have now. It’s as if some people no longer appreciate anything. We no longer want Europe, we no longer want freedom, we no longer want anything, we only want ourselves, Romania? Because Europe is taking everything from us. I don’t understand. What is Europe taking from us?

I think about the people who died in the Revolution and the progress that has been made, because progress has been made. Some people don’t want to see it, but I say it has been made.

We are free to leave whenever we want, wherever we want. Isn’t that a good thing?”

***

This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

The post From Dărmănești to the Paris National Opera, the voice of mezzo-soprano Cornelia Oncioiu is the cry of a generation appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

He left Romania for Argentina at 19, and dance opened his horizons to a new world, full of possibilities, to diversity and understanding. He studied ballet, modern dance, and contemporary dance, was part of a church choir, danced in one of Paris’s famous cabarets, and settled in the French capital, where he is a dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher.

Decisively influenced by the great Romanian choreographer Gigi Căciuleanu and trained by his partner, Ruxandra Racoviță, Daniel Pop carries on the love for contemporary dance and enriches it with his own ideas, movements, and emotions.

I met him in Paris just hours before he was to go on stage at the Opéra National de Paris, where he is part of the opera Manon.

***

Daniel Pop’s story begins 37 years ago in Târgu-Mureș. Born in one of Romania’s most ethnically mixed communities, he grew up surrounded by diversity, which later helped him adapt to the different cultures he encountered.

“I was raised by grandparents, parents, teachers with this idea that if you learn a foreign language, you’ll have an extra chance in life. They told me: be curious, be open, accept diversity.

In Târgu Mureș, we have this cohabitation of space with those of Hungarian origin. Our neighbors are Hungarian, my mother went to primary school in Hungarian, and so I grew up with this exercise of multiculturalism. It seemed very important to me as an adult, a professional, if I have something to say and am encouraged and warmly welcomed into a new space, then to come and accept this challenge and propose such an exercise of artistic creation in several languages, where at some point, in fact, language was no longer a barrier,” says Daniel.

He always felt a magnetic attraction to dance, even if his father would have preferred him to box, because “boys need to know how to defend themselves.”

“Being a child with bronchial asthma, I had quite fragile health at that time and was forbidden to do sports. I danced from a very young age in front of the television, imitating stars like Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears. I had a lot of habits that no one understood. I went to ballet somewhat secretly.

I was beaten quite a lot as a child, in front of the block. I was very whiny, often sick, I wasn’t allowed to eat ice cream. I went to classical dance because what I saw on television toughened me up a lot, and I told myself, ‘look how beautiful, how graceful, how good it is there.’

I used to imitate gestures a lot; I imitated my mother who smoked and I secretly smoked pencils. I watched some films about cabaret and taught imaginary children dance and all sorts of subjects.

And I say this now because, after all, I danced for many years in a cabaret, I became a dancer, and I also became a teacher. Somehow these childhood dreams became reality.

How were your childhood dance classes?

I went to ballet classes in Târgu Mureș, at the general school gym. At one point, my parents were called to give their consent for me to receive a scholarship to the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow.

My teacher said it would be good for me to try to go to a ballet school in Russia because boys are needed and because I am tall and could develop very well.

I think ballet saved me from my medical condition, in the sense that I developed my lung capacity. However, my parents were still very worried and did not agree to my leaving for Moscow.

What did you do after that?

At 18, when I finished high school, I had the opportunity to go to Argentina to a dance school, through a very good friend from Târgu Mureș, who had been there for two years studying cinematography.

I was supposed to prepare for the choreography section of UNATC in Bucharest, but it didn’t inspire me at all to go to Bucharest. I think there were also these stereotypes about the relationship between the province and Bucharest. At that time, I was part of a church choir and a high school theater group.

Those at Ariel Theater in Târgu Mureș, where I was already working as an amateur, told me: “Dance is against the clock; go for dance because you can do theater at any age.”

And somehow my work is somewhere at the intersection of theater and dance. My personal artistic projects and interests led me on this path, so somehow I still managed to have some contact with theater.”

In Argentina, however, he was to discover contemporary dance, in a completely different way than he perceived dance, through the lens of the rigors imposed by ballet exercises. There he studied at a dance school and worked in parallel as a waiter to ensure an income.

At the time, Gigi Căciuleanu, who was to become his mentor, was the artistic director of the National Ballet of Chile.

“He was already working with professional dancers; I wasn’t prepared for contemporary dance at that level, and he proposed that I come to Paris to attend the Conservatory, where his lifelong partner, Ruxandra Racoviță, was a professor. She had the Contemporary Dance department, and I was her last generation of students. She trained me in contemporary dance, and after I finished, I started dancing in a company where Gigi Căciuleanu staged shows.

And I worked in that company for about 5-6 years, touring through Europe, dancing a lot here in France and Italy.

What convinced you to make the transition from ballet to contemporary dance?

A very great embarrassment I felt in a contemporary dance class in Buenos Aires where, effectively, after 10 minutes, I picked up my bag to leave. When I put my hand on the doorknob, the teacher stopped the class and said: “Are you sure you want to leave? I think there’s something for you; you just have to give it time.” And it was a challenge, because I’ve always been very agitated, very wild, preoccupied with a hundred things, somewhat dispersed in space, and contemporary dance opened up a vision where anything was possible.

But where did that embarrassment come from?

From some movements that were not necessarily in my comfort zone or in what I knew how to do, namely the very rigorous ABC of classical dance.

When I discovered contemporary dance, I didn’t know these elements; everything was about weight, about breathing, about falling to the ground, about slowing down, movement about speeds, different volumes, bodies. All these things I liked very much and embarrassed me at the same time.

I was somehow afraid to throw myself harder. I saw that there’s always room for more, and in classical dance there’s room for more and movements can be perfected, but classical dance goes through a certain repetition of movement until it becomes perfect, whereas in contemporary dance, that doesn’t exist.

Contemporary dance has more to do with movement that will be nourished by a thought, by an emotion behind it, with deciphering certain cultures and subjects. I think it’s something much more universal and much more open to people.

And you made the complete transition? You no longer danced ballet?

Yes, I continued classical dance as training, because it seemed very rigorous and very important for the body and for body posture. Continuing with classical dance is a kind of morning prayer, but I plunged into the world of contemporary dance, being very convinced that this is the path I want to take.

I also had this inclination towards the world of theater; I really liked talking about different subjects, having different characters, not necessarily being in this world of the romantic prince who has to carry the princess or the swan through space.

Then, in Argentina, I also discovered the world of modern dance, namely jazz, musical. And when I arrived in Paris, apropos of what you work to support yourself, I auditioned for a very famous cabaret here, Paradis Latin – the cabaret that is placed in the same line as Moulin Rouge and Lido. It was built by Gustave Eiffel in an architecture very similar to that of the tower.

It’s a cabaret where the cancan dance was invented and first danced in Paris.

I worked there for 5 years at night, so I could do what I liked during the day – contemporary dance. I was somehow between the two worlds, the world of night and the world of day.

And I also taught in a modern dance club and various body maintenance techniques.

Why did you choose to continue doing this in Paris? Was there no place for contemporary dance in Romania? Or in Argentina?

In Paris, I found my place, and I really liked the diversity. I think what I had to say had to do with something very universal; I liked having colleagues from all over the world.

Then here there is an artist’s status, an “intermittence du spectacle” regime.

This wage system is unique in the world. It is a self-sustaining system. Depending on what you declare and what taxes you pay to the state, they then ensure you a decent living between projects.

How has being part of this much more open world of contemporary dance changed you on a human level?

I believe that contemporary dance is about a lot of introspection and it is an intimate and very internal journey of one’s own self, of being. At the same time, you can be a messenger, a connecting point between cultures, between people, between different languages, between different forms of expression.

I don’t think I would be the same if I hadn’t lived in Argentina for three years and if I hadn’t immersed myself in a Latin American culture.

And regarding tradition, identity, and where I come from, I have always tried to preserve this very beautiful and varied relief of Transylvania, the land where I was born, and to bring it through movements, through a certain melancholy, into dance.”

At the time of our meeting in Paris, Daniel was preparing to go on stage at the Opéra Bastille, where he has been part of the production and cast of the opera Manon since 2020. Following an audition, he was selected for the dance corps. Then the celebrated tenor Benjamin Bernheim chose him as his stage partner for several scenes, so in some performances, he is an actor. In parallel, he was also appointed choreography assistant.

“The choreographic proposal for this show has quite classical and neoclassical content, but also has jazz, modern, and contemporary dance influences. Based on these competencies acquired through the multitude of aesthetics my body has gone through during my years of study, I managed to get this casting.

From the outside, it seems that this multidisciplinary approach is increasingly common in the world of opera and ballet in Paris. I’ve seen shows where hip-hop dancers have performed on stage alongside tenors and sopranos. How is this modernization of a classical world viewed from within?

I think France has always been avant-garde and has aimed to experiment with new forms. Artistic transversality and this interdisciplinarity have found a cradle in France, through its history, through its revolutions. These revolutions were also felt in the arts, because an artist is an active citizen of society through the work he does, through the risks he takes, and through this universality with which he responds to new challenges.

The last few years in France, it seems to me, have been about breaking these barriers, about trying to go hand in hand with this idea of democratizing dance, of opening up spaces a lot, of mixing the world of professional dancers with amateur dancers.

At the state level, cultural policies have been designed in such a way that dance reaches many new spaces, and even large institutions, such as the opera, bring new voices from certain territories very far from classical forms. Of course, there have been controversies, and there always are controversies. If you look, for example, at the Louvre pyramid, there was a big scandal because something totally innovative, something angular, was intervened in a heritage space, and there were all sorts of conspiracies.

It’s a very clear example that we can live in a very large diversity, and this was also the reason why I stayed here.

Because daily I met new people, from new cultures, from new countries, and it was somehow an adopted land where we all felt equal together.

And from a geographical point of view, it was a strategy to be in Paris because I could go anywhere, east, west, north, south, very easily and return here, as the French say, to a pied-à-terre, having a foot very anchored in this culture and in this diversity.

Have you also become a French citizen?

Yes, after 12 years of living here, as a European citizen with the same rights, after all, as the French. It was a personal decision to also take French citizenship because it seemed to me that it somehow crowns a certain effort I made to understand, without judging, why the French are cold and distant, when, in fact, they are just reserved. I came from a collective education, like communism, to the land of enlightenment thinkers, philosophers, great thinkers, where individualism is paramount and where a person, an individual, must learn to fend for himself.

For me, it was very clear that I am like them, and a citizenship does not cancel the one I have and the identities I have, but it is something that enriches me, something that completes me and makes me feel more complex.”

Although he is already perfectly integrated in France, Daniel frequently returns to Romania, where he has also laid the foundations for an artistic residency in Saschiz, Transylvania. This summer, his project, entitled International Artistic Residencies Camp “LEGĂTURI” (CONNECTIONS), is already in its 4th edition. Every year, international and national artists are invited to meet students from our vocational faculties, as well as the local community.

“I feel at home in Transylvania. And in the places where I grew up, where I am always welcomed with open arms, and where we have the camp, I feel that I receive a lot of trust in the artistic formats I propose.

In Saschiz, I propose a mix of different cultures and worlds: that of art school students, with internationally renowned and national artists, with children from culturally disadvantaged rural areas, with key people in their communities, namely those who work in education and tell children about our activities.

In the first year, they were a little more reluctant when they heard so many different languages on the street, in their village; it was something very new. But when I brought a fashion designer who presented at Fashion Week in Paris, they came, stood close to the door, very quiet, listened to this artist with whom I moderated a discussion about his journey, about how he markets his products, about how he creates in Paris. And at the end, when a video presentation of the Fashion Week runway ended, they were the first to shout bravo and applaud.

Then, I think of the children who took eco-fashion workshops with this designer; they learned to sew, to give new life to an old garment.

All through gestures and through body language, they were able to connect. And then, for me, that was clear proof that when we meet and try to communicate with our bodies, we overcome many barriers.”

***

This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

The post Daniel Pop, Romanian-French dancer and choreographer: “When we communicate with the body, we overcome many barriers.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO version

From one year to the next, Anamaria Vartolomei takes on increasingly complex and diverse roles, works with world-renowned filmmakers, and enriches her list of awards.

A constant presence at major film festivals that celebrate auteur cinema—Cannes, Berlin, or Venice—the 26-year-old French-Romanian actress already has an impressive filmography and a César, the French equivalent of the Oscar.

She was born on April 9, 1999, in Bacău, but grew up in the village of Plopu, near the town of Dărmănești. When she was just 2 years old, her parents left to work in France, and she remained in the care of her grandparents. At 6, she left her village childhood behind and arrived directly in Paris to join her family.

We met again now, in the French capital, 4 years after our first feature story. I understood that beyond her obvious talent and beauty, the less visible qualities upon which she has built a successful career have more to do with a precocious maturity and faithfulness to her own values.

***

Anamaria Vartolomei began acting at just 10 years old in the film My Little Princess, directed by Eva Ionesco, a French director of Romanian origin. Her on-screen partner was none other than actress Isabelle Huppert, and the film premiered at Cannes in the Semaine de la Critique section.

For her role, she was nominated in 2012 for the Lumière Awards in the most promising young actress category. In 2021, she won the Lumière Award for Best Actress and the César Award for Most Promising Actress for the film L’Événement (Happening), directed by Audrey Diwan, which won the Golden Lion at Venice.

L’Événement (2021) is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by writer Annie Ernaux (winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022), regarding her experience with an abortion when it was illegal in 1960s France. This was her first leading role.

“L’Événement, I think, remains, in a way, my business card. It’s the film that traveled the most, and in the United States, it was distributed right when Texas was banning abortion, so it had a much greater impact than we imagined.”

After that, I received many offers, especially many related to abortion. In France, there’s a problem with labeling; if you do a drama, you only get drama scripts, if you do a comedy, that’s it, you’re pigeonholed as a comedy actor. And I didn’t understand why. I just made a film about a clandestine abortion, don’t these people want to see me in something else? So, it was very difficult for me to choose the right project afterward.”

What mark did winning the César Award leave on your career, on you?

“The César I received was for ‘female hope’ (espoir féminin), there’s a positivism that emanates from the award. People show you they have faith in you, and you, in a way, have to show them you deserve your place. What I mean is that the award also came with a kind of pressure and responsibility. That’s how I felt, on a personal level. I felt I had to show they made the right choice, but that was a personal pressure, not from the industry.“

“You always have this fear that it might be the last role, and you depend on many factors that you can’t control anyway.”

Anamaria Vartolomei, actress

At Venice, she was noticed by the jury president, none other than Korean director Bong Joon Ho, winner of 4 Oscars for the film Parasite. This led to the offer to act in his film, Mickey 17, alongside Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, and Toni Collette. It was her debut in English and with an American film crew, the movie being produced by Warner Bros. Pictures with a budget of nearly 120 million dollars. On the London film set, one of the executive producers was also present – Brad Pitt. Anamaria confesses that, at first, she felt awkward in this universe.

“It was hard, first of all, because it’s not my language. I had a dialect coach. Bong was okay with my accent, but I wanted to perfect it. Being my first role in English, with such a good cast, I wanted it to be a kind of business card for the United States, so people could see I don’t have that typical French accent that confines you to all sorts of secondary roles as a seductive Frenchwoman.

The director was very nice. He didn’t want us to take the role into cliché at all. He let me work as I wanted with the coach and really helped me. He is very humble, generous, he’s like a child on the set.

At first, I didn’t feel like I belonged at all. Everything was so big. I had only worked with French crews, where you have about 30 people on the team and you know everyone. Then I found myself in a huge studio, and when I came out of it, I saw Ryan Gosling, because they were filming Barbie at the time. I got in the car and told the driver: ‘That was Ryan Gosling!’ But the man was used to it, it was normal for him; for me, everything was new.”

And here, in France, how is it?

“It’s not like that. I, for example, don’t like to be alone. I stay with the crew. Sure, sometimes you need to isolate yourself, but for a few minutes, an hour at most. But with Americans, each star had their status, they are isolated, that’s how they work.

And I, at first, suffered a lot because of this, I felt lonely, especially since I was the only French person. Afterward, I asked to stay on set. I thought, I don’t see these people every day while working, let me at least take advantage of it.

In the end, it was okay, especially after I realized that if I only thought about my accent, I wouldn’t be focusing on the pleasure of acting, on the emotions. And I got used to the language, to the place. And, in the end, this wasn’t even a completely American experience. We filmed in London, with many Europeans, the director is Korean, and Mark Ruffalo even told me: “You know, it’s not usually like this.” Creativity and a more European manner were the priority.

How did you build the character?

We discussed a lot about how he imagined the character. He always directs you, he wants you to propose things, you have that freedom, he likes it when you let yourself be guided by your imagination, but he is very attentive to rhythm. Everything is precise to the millimeter, meaning if you have to put your hand on a cake at the three-second mark, you have to put your hand there at that exact moment. If not, you do it again.

He drew everything, he made a storyboard, and every evening he would send you each scene, drawn out, for what you were scheduled to film the next day. The film was already edited in a way; if I was drawn in profile, that’s how I was filmed, so everything was very precisely thought out.

What was the interaction like with your co-stars, who are so well-known in Hollywood?

Robert Pattinson was very isolated, but I think, being very shy, he was protecting himself in a way, especially since he had 80-90 days of shooting, playing two roles. I understood he needed to concentrate. But he is very nice.

Mark Ruffalo is very cool, he would shake hands with every extra before and after playing the scene. I really liked him before I met him, and I liked him even more when I realized he’s genuinely a good guy. No airs, nothing. He also had his doubts sometimes, he wasn’t sure about what he was proposing. He was always a very agreeable partner, he motivated you, he encouraged you. For example, sometimes when we would leave together after we finished, he would tell me: ‘That was great, bravo!’”

Și te simțeai într-un fel, dacă Mark Ruffalo mi-a zis că am făcut treaba bună, înseamnă că e ok.

Did you leave that project with a different kind of self-confidence?

“No. I thought, now that I’ve finished filming, I’m going to be cut from the edit, hahaha. I lived with the fear that it was, after all, something too big for me. But ultimately, the impression is that they are two different industries. Americans dream of making films like us, with the camera on the shoulder, close to the emotion, without makeup, like we do in Romania, in Belgium, in France. They dream of that because it’s something totally different.

And we are fascinated by what we don’t know. I think we all have a desire to work with what we don’t know. Now I can say that I don’t necessarily have that dream anymore, of making films in America. Sure, I would like to, but I’m not so keen on it.”

While her role in Mickey 17 was secondary, Anamaria Vartolomei impressed film critics with two other main roles: in Being Maria, directed by Jessica Palud, presented at Cannes in 2024, and most recently, the role of a young mother in L’intérêt d’Adam (Adam’s Interest), directed by Laura Wandel and presented this year, also at Cannes, in the Semaine de la Critique section.

In Being Maria, Vartolomei brings to life the story of actress Maria Schneider, the victim of abuse by director Bernardo Bertolucci in Last Tango in Paris (1972) and by her famous co-star, Marlon Brando, now played by Matt Dillon.

“Filming Maria was very intense; it lasted 25 days because we didn’t have much money, and it took place in Paris and a little in the south of France. It was very difficult because it was a character role for me, very different from who I am. I worked a lot with Jessica Palud.

Of course, we started to question the subject itself; you ask yourself questions, as an actress. Especially since I started acting when I was 10 years old. You realize, I was very protected by everyone, because I also had my parents with me, who aren’t from the industry and wanted to make sure everything was okay. I was very privileged, in a way, that nothing happened to me and I never had to deal with strange things or abusive people. Plus, since the #metoo phenomenon, the dynamics have changed, nevertheless. But when you dig deeper, you realize that these things still happen.

The fact that women speak out, that actresses speak out, matters a lot. There is also protection for minors on set. Now things are really changing and becoming mandatory.”

From this point of view, do you feel more comfortable working with female directors, with women?

“I never thought about the gender of the person writing a script, and my view of the world doesn’t depend on what I have between my legs…

Of course, it influences you in a way, but it’s a matter of sensitivity, first of all—of culture, of many other factors that make me see the world in a certain way.

I realize I’ve worked more with women than men, but I think that came naturally. When I read a script, I don’t consider whether it’s a woman or a man, but rather how they emphasize nudity. I question that more, if it’s necessary, how it’s filmed, how much is filmed…

“For me, it’s important that nudity has an artistic justification, that it adds something to the film, that we don’t do things gratuitously.
That’s been done for years. Enough!”

For example, with the Merteuil series, adapted from Dangerous Liaisons—which is, after all, an erotic book—it was interesting to see how, in 2024, you can retell the story in a more feminist way, so to speak, and to see what the director’s approach was. We all worked together, with the help of an intimacy coach; we discussed what was necessary and what wasn’t, what you’re comfortable with and what you’re not.”

The miniseries Merteuil will be released this fall on HBO Max and stars Anamaria Vartolomei, Lucas Bravo (editor’s note: who plays Gabriel in Emily in Paris), and the famous German actress Diane Kruger, known for Inglourious Basterds and In The Fade.

“Diane impressed me, she is a very magnetic woman, she has something spectral, something cold, German. I talked to her, and she told me she suffered a lot because when she was young and working as a model, it was hard for her to shake that image and be given a chance to show she can act. And she really can! She does some things in the series that truly impressed me. She’s an actress who works hard; she doesn’t mess around. With all her experience, she still wants to prove what she’s capable of. I found that vulnerability interesting—to still have doubts while playing a very complex role. And I learned a lot from her; on set, she is very focused, she’s technical, and she knows the script perfectly, even though it’s not her native language.”

“It’s a luxury to have access to these very talented people. Honestly, I think Mark Ruffalo impressed me the most. I’ve seen so many of his films, and he always seems brilliant to me. He also has something different from the typical American standard. He has something more sensitive. For them, it’s a very serious profession; they work a lot with coaches. In France, we rely more on spontaneity. In America, they prepare for the role more.”

After the premiere of the film L’intérêt d’Adam at Cannes, the publication The New York Times dedicated a special article to her with the headline: “Anamaria Vartolomei Brings a Fearless Note to Her Roles.” Variety praised the actress’s performance as “terrific.”

In love with auteur cinema, Anamaria confesses that such difficult, but relevant, roles bring her the greatest satisfaction. She is at a point where she can choose the projects she gets involved in, and behind her decisions, there is both a strategy and an emotional side.

“Sometimes I choose by instinct; it has to be well-written, of course, to be constructed in a fairly controlled way, so I know I’ll be with someone who knows what they’re doing. Yes, the director’s name matters, but I am also very open to first films; that has never been an obstacle for me. Then, of course, the role itself matters, what is proposed to me, what they allow me to do, but there’s also a strategy involved.

I made many period films for a while. Should I do another one? No. I’ll do something contemporary. For example, I filmed The Count of Monte Cristo, then De Gaulle, which will be released in 2026, I was confirmed for Merteuil, then I spoke with my agent and told her I want to return to something that represents me more, an auteur, independent film. And, with God’s help, that very week, I received L’intérêt d’Adam. I really wanted to return to such a project, I was truly happy, I said: what a cool role!”

“It was a very difficult shoot; we filmed a lot in long takes, the role was hard, the story takes place over a single day, and you have to maintain the emotion for an extended period. It helped me a lot to act alongside Léa Drucker; she is such a good actress and a very kind woman!

It’s made by the people who also produced Anatomy of a Fall and by the Dardenne brothers. It was a combination that immediately made you think of a festival.”

So you try to choose your projects intelligently and hope that you’ll be there too,” says Anamaria Vartolomei.

In De Gaulle, a two-part biopic about the French general and president Charles de Gaulle, Anamaria plays the main female role – a heroine of the French Resistance. In fact, it’s noteworthy that almost all of her main roles portray different forms of female heroism.

In 2024, Anamaria also made her debut in the Romanian language. She is the protagonist of the film Jaful Secolului (The Heist of the Century), directed by Teodora Mihai, from a screenplay by Cristian Mungiu. The story is based on the case of Romanian thieves who stole famous paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, and Monet from the Netherlands, then burned them. In the film, Anamaria Vartolomei is Natalia, a young mother who went to work in the Netherlands to offer her daughter, left at home with her grandmother, a better life. For this role, Anamaria received the Best Actress Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

“I was nervous because, after all, I have a slight French accent, and Mungiu told me so. We tried to work together to erase it as much as possible. I act differently in French, I act differently in English, and I act differently in Romanian. It’s never the same way of interpreting, of questioning, of bringing characters to life.”

Did this experience bring you closer to your roots in any way?

“Yes, totally. And especially the film, being a story that is close to my parents’ journey, who also left when I was little, they worked in France to bring me there…

For me, it was a very intimate way of talking about an experience that is, in fact, universal, but for me, it had something very personal.”

“What other projects would you like to do? Is there a specific director you would like to work with?

I’ve made a sort of mental list of people I’d like to work with, but it’s not limited to that. Sometimes you have directors who are just starting out and they propose a brilliant script. I’d like to continue making films in France, to make more films in Romania, in America, in England.”

Beyond a brilliant career on the big screen, Anamaria Vartolomei is also an ambassador for the house of Chanel. All of her red carpet appearances have been provided by Chanel ever since she was just a child.

“How do you feel in the world of Chanel, when you go to their events, when you wear their outfits?”

“It’s strange to say this, and I don’t want it to sound pretentious, but I feel at home, because I started working with them when I was 12 years old; I grew up with them. We have a professional relationship, but we also have a very human one, a rather beautiful relationship of loyalty; they even know my family.

They are loyal to the people they work with, they keep them, they hold you dear to their hearts, they try to bring you closer to them, to do great things together.”

Everything concerning her career and her image is now handled by three specialists: a film agent, an image agent, and a person dedicated to PR. They advise her on making the best decisions regarding the films she acts in, the events she attends, and the interviews she gives.

“First of all, you have to know what you want. If you want to appear everywhere and you enjoy it, okay, that’s great; there are many actors who do that.

But there are also events I want to go to and it’s nice; I have the opportunity to meet people from the industry whom I wouldn’t meet otherwise. For example, I went to a dinner organized by Madame Figaro magazine, a magazine I appreciate and for which I’ve done two covers, and Coralie Fargeat, the director of the film The Substance, was sitting in front of me. I was happy to meet her.

When you’re not working, what do you like to do?

What all normal people do in their free time. Yes, sometimes, when I’m between projects, I get bored, especially if my friends have fixed-hour jobs and are at work, but I go to the movies, I take walks, I do sports, I read a bit. But even when there’s no filming, there are promotional periods, and those require availability, both of time and emotionally.

“Are there also negative sides that come with your profession?”

“Yes, doubts, uncertainty, you don’t really know what to expect. It’s hard to make a place for yourself, but I think it’s even harder to maintain it. You have to have a strategy, but also remain spontaneous, preserve your personality, enrich your imagination. But sometimes it doesn’t depend on you, and I think the hardest part is to think that you work for nothing, that it’s useless to be good, to be serious; sometimes when it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be, and when it doesn’t catch on, it doesn’t catch on. So I think that’s the hardest part.

That was pretty hard for me. When you don’t have the necessary maturity, the first thing that comes to mind when someone else is chosen instead of you is to ask yourself what you’re missing. You think she’s better, especially when it’s a person very different from who you are; it makes you compare yourself a lot. But that changes with age.

I would say this profession has developed a kind of constant competition; you become competitive. A friend once told me: ‘Anamaria, life is not a casting,’ and it made me change my mind. Indeed, you don’t necessarily have to succeed at everything, to be the best. In your personal life, I think we can allow ourselves to be more vulnerable, to fall, to get back up. That also makes you grow and develop as a person.

It’s important to allow yourself not to be perfect, not to be what the world expects you to be.

A few years ago, you closed your Instagram account. Why did you choose to step away from social media?

Because it was too toxic. People post what they eat, who they go out with; that developed a rather unhealthy curiosity in me. Curiosity, for me, is a very important quality, but that was a misplaced, harmful curiosity. I didn’t like what it was producing in me. Then yes, there were the comparisons. I wanted to be like this, to be there, like others. You become frustrated, and it felt like it was degrading me a bit.

So even for you, a successful, beautiful person, social media caused you to have doubts?

Yes, I think it happens to everyone. I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t compare themselves to someone else. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Then, as an actor, to use it for self-promotion seems strange to me. I wasn’t comfortable posting pictures of myself, saying: ‘look, I did this.’ Okay, there are people who handle promotion, but for you to do it yourself seems a bit strange to me.

What does your PR agent say about that, does she agree?

She has nothing to do with it; no one can force you. I know there are brands that impose it. For example, there are actors and actresses who would have liked to leave social media, but because they have a contract with a brand, they have to post pictures of what they do for them.

Has it ever happened that you missed out on a contract because you didn’t have a social media account?

No, Chanel doesn’t require that.”

In her next project, the film Miles & Juliette, she will play the lead female role. Mick Jagger, the lead singer of the Rolling Stones, will produce the film through his company, Jagged Films. The film will tell the story of the famous jazz musician Miles Davis, who travels to Paris in 1949 at the age of 22. There, he falls in love with Juliette Gréco, a French singer and actress, played by Anamaria Vartolomei. The cast will also include Xavier Dolan.

It’s all the more impressive for us that, among so many important collaborations, Anamaria accepted a new interview for Cultura la dubă. “Of course, how could I not? You were the first to tell my story in Romania,” she says with a smile on her face.

At our meeting, she wears a Chanel suit as naturally as can be, with a pair of jeans and minimal makeup. She has the natural charm of a Frenchwoman, but her ease and sociable nature have more to do with her Romanian roots. In her family, in Paris, they speak predominantly Romanian, and Anamaria continues the tradition of going to the Orthodox church on Sundays.

What do you feel still connects you to Romania? Do you still feel a sense of belonging?

Yes, the more I grow, the more I feel it. For example, now, during the elections, I went to vote. I also feel a responsibility as a Romanian from the diaspora.

We, those of us here, also contribute to what Romania means, I realized that from the election results. Just because we are not there doesn’t mean the country no longer belongs to us.

It’s up to us to manage to maintain a balance and lead the country towards what we can see here, as an economic, political, social, cultural model. We have a very rich country and it’s a shame it’s not developed enough. I feel quite responsible for what happens there and I try to stay connected.

When I filmed The Count of Monte Cristo, they came up with the idea for me to speak Romanian and I thought it was very beautiful, I was proud. It’s important to showcase your country, to show people that we are more than just a few clichés. After all, we have so many talents… And through your project, at Cultura la dubă, we see how many talents Romania has, who are doing important, difficult things. We must be proud of this and act in such a way that there are more and more of them.

I’ve seen that in interviews you give abroad, you say you are from Romania.

“Yes, of course. I like that Chanel now, when they post something, writes ‘French-Romanian actress,’ because that’s what I am in the end. I have never tried to erase it, to pretend I’m just French, because that’s not what represents me.”

***

This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

The post SPECIAL Anamaria Vartolomei, actress: “I feel a responsibility as a Romanian from the diaspora. We are more than just a few clichés.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

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.

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.

RO

After the Revolution in 1989, most of Romanians tasted freedom for the first time. They burned photographs of Ceaușescu, got in line to vote, drank Coca-Cola or simply left.

What before 1989 was called fleeing, became a right to travel, and especially those who had the possibilities, chose other countries and never returned.

Dorin Crețu was engaged to a French woman and had been waiting for three years for the permission to get married and leave to France. He did not get it, the simple request arose suspicions of betrayal and interrogations, so the Revolution gave him a chance at a new life.

He has been living in Paris for 32 years, where he is an established painter and has recieved the support of the French state to develop hi passion for art, born during his childhood in Brașov.

Without being part of a family of artists, he lived, however, in an environment where art was appreciated. He felt attracted as a child to colors. He used to paint and make African masks, so his parents allowed him to go to The Plastic Arts High School.

He then went studied Plastic Arts in college in Bucharest and had a short career as a teacher.

“I was made a painting teacher somewhere in Moldova, at a school. Being somewhat restless, I left teaching and became a freelancer.”

What freelancing meant in communist Romania is hard to say. What is certain is that his choices did not give him a positive image in the party’s eyes and had to balance between his passion for painting and his citizen duties.

“It was somehow complicated, I had a scholarship and I had to do a three year probation.

I went to the Carpați Trust, that was handling the building of The People’s Palace and, because there weren’t any openings at painting restauration, I got transferred to sculpture.

I did my probation there, as a sculptor in stone.”

He also received from the Plastic Artists Union in Romania a workshop on Mendeleev street in Bucharest, and, in the evening, after work, he would go there to paint.

He left for Paris with a thirst to paint, alongside his French partner. Only, there, he didn’t have any support and had to start from nothing. He only had an art portfolio, with which he knocked on the doors of the French Ministry of Culture.

“I went through all those offices with photos of my works, begging them to look at my work. I came across an inspector who liked what he saw and showed me the way and the first steps that I had to do.

That’s how I signed up for scholarships, for the acquisition of works on The National Contemporary Arts Fund. And The French State bought one of my works, then I got a scholarship, then came exhibits and awards that didn’t mean only diplomas, but also an important financial support.”

More than this, he was in a contest organized by an artistic commission and received his first workshop, somewhere on the outskirts of Paris.

“Back then, Romania had another image.

After The Revolution, there was a positive attention on us, something honest coming from the French. We were a lot of artists who came to Paris and could benefit from the advantages.”

“Back then, Rromanians were welcomed and supported. Now Romania’s image isn’t that glorious. It is that of those playing in the metro, those giving rides with the bikes around the Eiffel Tower.”

But life wasn’t all good, even with the support from the French State. So he had to work in order to support himself.

“It is terribly nice to play artist, but it is difficult to live only out of art.”

“Having sculptor friends who were already working at the restoration of The Louvre, I remembered my years balancing between color and sculpting in Romania, and for 2 or 3 years I chiseled on the Louvre facade.

I was in the garden of the Pyramid and was chiseling, beyond decorations and geometrical shapes, I would work on the sculptures themselves. There were some characters that I sculpted in full.

I remember how the block was inserted. We would make a small hole in the degraded sculpture and they would add the stone block that you had to sculpt into that, in order to complete in the existing shape what was missing.

Teams of Romanians and French had finished restoring the segment and moved on to other ones, but I stopped and decided to give making a living out of painting another try.”

Even though at the time he was not happy having to work somewhere other than his workshop, he now proudly shows us the characters in the sculptures on the Louvre facade which he restored.

He lives in Northern Paris, on the Saint Martin Canal, in a duplex recieved from the French State. On one floor is the living space, and on the other, his workshop.

Even if it is not free, but at a 50% of the price of rent, the workshop that he won at the contest is still a privilege, given the immense competition in a cultural capital of the world, such as Paris.

“There are a lot of artists workshops in this area, some given by the city hall, some by the French Ministry of Culture, some private.

You come here with the energy and desire to show your work, you want to move mountains. What is harder is having continuity, because life in Paris is not cheap and you come across material problems.”

Dorin Crețu has sold, during his career, about 300 works and has had shows in Paris, Bucharest, London or Krakow.

In his works we can frequently find a floral motif, that welcomes us from the very entrance on his apartment in Paris.

On the walls there are framed pages of his mothers herbarium, from his house in Brașov.

“At first I was attracted to the idea of painting differently. And I came across a French artistic current – Supports/Surfaces.

And I saw that you can paint not only with oil on canvas. They would paint on petals, military bandages, they would cut wood. That way I managed to develop a technique that was appreciated. One of the works that I did then was bought by The National Contemporary Arts Fund.

I was an ancient stela on which I glued pieces of lace, over which I threw bitumen. And the lace and bitumen formed a sort of calligraphy that fit in perfectly with the stela shape.

At a certain point , from the excess of materials, I felt the need for a clean slate and to try to paint without materials.

Which is a sort of chemical experience, not an easy one.

I worked with some acrylic resins that allowed me to get those transparencies, those pictural reports, without which a painting cannot exist.

And I have developed, for some years now, having floral and vegetal motifs, this theme.

Even though I am now looking at another motif – the mountain – I always return to that floral shape. I can’t wait to go to camp (in Bistrița, Romania) and draw some trees, that will probably later feed me into making something on a larger scale, with the same floral theme.”

“The vegetal shape is a form of reflection on existence, a sort of fragility of life, but also vanity, it lives for a moment and then it dies.”

Meanwhile, he has become equally preoccupied with the mountain motif, without being able to identify the origin of this interest. He remembers, though, that in his teen years in Brașov, he had a passion for landscape photography and collected tens of mountain photographs.

“Artistic vision changes with time, it adds to itself, it grows. Of course I keep memories or something from the beginning.

I thought that the mountain motif has plenty of imagery that I can put it on canvas, I’m attracted to this solid shape that you can paint on the canvas, it’s like a solid solitary.”

Dorin Crețu is an artist representative to the ’80’s generation in Romania and has come back, for a few years, in Bucharest, where he got back his workshop on Mendeleev street, after 30 years. Also, The National Museum of Contemporary Art has bought two of his works.

“They were bought following an exhibition I had in Mogoșoaia. The director of MNAC from back then, Oroveanu, proposed the acquisition of two of my works, which filled me with joy.”

He travels to Bucharest almost monthly and is represented by AnnArt Gallery, along with renowned artists such as Sorin Ilfoveanu, Ștefan Câlția.

He is happy to remake an artistic connection with his home country and hopes to constantly earn the freedom to paint.

“I have an itch in my fingers, I love colors, I find personal pleasure in what I do.”

“It can be paper, canvas, a piece of wood or something else. But all these pleasures are being paid for in some way. An artist’s life is not easy, be it in Bucharest, or Paris.

To do what you like is an extraordinary luxury, and it must be paid for.”

For that, in Paris he sometimes works as an interior designer, collaborating with French architects, earning his living.

He is a French citizen, but has kept his Romanian citizenship.

“I speak French, but have not lost my Eastern accent, and I am immediately spotted. And I naturally say that I am Romanian, I live in Paris, I am a French Citizen, with Romanian origins.”

“But the status of an artist does not stop at borders. I want to believe that his vision is broader, pushed toward humanity.

Nowadays, any artist can get on a plane and go anywhere, see exhibits, visit new places, then come back. You don’t have to take important migration decisions anymore.”

“The artist of today is free to chose his place of creation. Art is like a fluid, a flux, it must move everywhere.”

Romanian or French, Dorin Crețu is an artist, a father and a person constantly fighting for his passion. He is grateful for the chance he got in 1990 and wishes that Romanians get the image that they had back then.

He bares the label of immigrant, and that motivates him to evolve.

“I fight the feeling of not belonging, and being suspended somewhere between Romania and France.”

“In the same time, there is the feeling of something that is not entirely yours, that you are a permanent spectator and never participate. There are moments when I feel that, and other times when I feel that Paris is mine.

On the other hand, the cultural barrier is not necessarily a bad thing. It pushes you to constantly show and be your best.”

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

The post Dorin Crețu, Romanian-French painter in Paris: “It is a luxury to do what you like, and it somehow has to be paid.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.