Join us for a live discussion with actress Ioana Flora (Fragile) and directors Oana Tenter (The Pastor's Women), Ioana Mischie (Fragile) and Oana Giurgiu (Occasional Spies), moderated by Alina Haliliuc.
Register HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvcuCtrzgoHN32pxpfrbkWvN-zYM1...
This event centers on Romanian women directors, actresses and scholars, and their reflections on the current state of Romanian film and its future. What kind of stories still need to be told through film, and by whom?
About Our Special Guests:
Oana Giurgiu- director:
Graduate in Journalism and Law, Oana Giurgiu has extensive experience as a producer of television programs, music videos and events as well as organizing Transilvania International Film Festival. She was cinematographer on the documentary “Doina and Nicolo”(1996) and directed TV documentaries as “The spider web” (1997), “About sand”(1998), “Refugee in Romania” (2004), “Me sem baxtalo?...”(2008). In 2004, she was location manager on Cristi Puiu\'s Cannes-award winner “The death of Mr. Lazarescu” and later, produced Tudor Giurgiu\'s feature debut “Love sick” which premiered in Berlinale 2006 and was a box-office success in Romania. Oana was the Romanian production manager on behalf of Libra Film for the Hungarian-German co-production “Delta” by Kornél Mundruczó, Fipresci award at Cannes 2008. In 2008 was the Romanian producer participating in Cannes, at “Producers on the move”- a project of European Film Promotion. She co-produced “Katalin Varga” by Peter Strickland, Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at Berlinale 2009 and Best European Discovery at European Film Academy Awards 2009. Currently as director/producer, she is developing at Archidoc – La femis workshop, the documentary “From Romania to Zion”. Her last projects as executive producer, “The kino caravan” by Titus Muntean, a co-production with Filmkombinat (Germany) was premiered in Pussan 2009 and “Somewhere at Palilula” the debut film of Silviu Purcarete is now in postproduction, while second film of Tudor Giurgiu “Of snails and men” is in pre-production.
Ioana Mischie-director:
Ioana Mischie is a Romanian-born cinematic storyteller (screenwriter/director) and transmedia futurist, awarded for filmmaking, creative writing, interactive concepts and a Fulbright Grantee Alumna of USC School of Cinematic Arts, researching transmedia storytelling as part of her doctoral study.Her cinematic projects as writer/director have traveled to more than 70 festivals worldwide and were developed in international programs. Co-founder and Head of Storyscapes, an NGO focusing transmedia storytelling and expanded narratives initiated in 2012 and since 2015 arts-based research collaborator of CINETic, a recently created Eastern European centre focussing the interaction between neuroscience and groundbreaking audio-visual paths.
Oana Țenter - director:
Oana Tenter is a documentary-maker and graduate student at UC Santa Cruz,
part of the Social Documentation MFA program. She is the recipient of a 2020-2022 Fulbright scholarship. Oana’s film “The Pastor’s Women” - about a Roma Pentecostal community set in her home country Romania - was screened at the UN-backed World Conference on Statelessness in the Hague and by Open City Docs London in 2019. Her work includes collaborations with The Roundhouse, The Young Vic Theatre, The Tab London, VIY. Her writing can be found in The Guardian, The Evening Standard, Internazionale, Scena9, Dispatch.
Ioana Flora- actress:
Ioana Flora debuted in acclaimed Romanian director Cristi Puiu's Stuff and Dough/Marfa si banii, where she starred alongside Dragos Bucur and Alexandru Papadopol. It was the first Romanian picture selected for the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs program at Cannes in 2001 and was credited with starting the New Wave of Romanian cinema. Recently, Ioana played the female lead in The Christmas Gift/Cadoul de Craciun, a short feature that is among the 10 live action shorts shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Awards. Directed by Bogdan Muresanu, the short film also received the Best Short Movie award at the European Film Awards in 2019. She is a critical darling, with both Romanian and international film critics heaping praise and accolades on her for being "an intense and instinctive artist - who always captures nuances with amazing precision and burns on the inside while acting, insofar as she can carry a whole film by herself." Ioana's filmography counts as many as 25 national and international productions, both in cinema and TV, and she was the recipient of one of the most valued distinctions in the international film industry - the Best Actress Award that she won at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2008, for Adrian Sitaru's Hooked.
About Our Moderator:
Alina Haliliuc earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Advocacy from the University of Iowa. Her scholarship examines public language under conditions of socio-political change, such as post-communist Romania. She reads a variety of cultural forms – from public debates and museums to live performances and film – with a curiosity for how the affective, ethical, and political imagination of people living in post-communism is discursively shaped. More recently, she has turned to ethics and affect as keys to discerning more enduring political imaginaries. In analyses of Romanian New Wave films “The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,” (in The Journal of Popular Culture and Text and Performance Quarterly) as well as in her field-based rhetorical criticism of nationalist performer Dan Puric (in Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method), Dr. Haliliuc examines how emotional and linguistic habits from the communist past are squared with ethical commitments in the present, with political consequences more difficult to map. She is currently Associate Professor at Denison University.
About the films:
Occasional Spies: Hailing from Romania, Yugoslavia, Slovakia and Austria, the subjects of Occasional Spies are young Jews who were recruited to Palestine during WWII to help the local resistance repel German invaders. Using the subjects' own voices to highlight their little-known acts of heroism, combined with both archival images and recreations from their retellings, the film amplifies these young Jewish fighters' fears and hopes as they navigated the increasingly hostile and violent Europe that they used to call home.
The Pastor's Women: The vibrant world of Pentacostal Roma in Romania is seldom seen outside that community. This short documentary explores the life of a pastor’s wife as she works tirelessly for her family and to improve her Roma community. She supports them all as a pillar of courage, love and hope. We see, too, this life from her six daughters’ perspectives.
Fragile: In Fragile, Ioana Mischie’s creative documentary, actress Ioana Flora gives voice to several Romanian women who have suffered abuse and trauma. Written by Flora in collaboration with Rucsandra Pop, the script compiles real stories under a common theme: “Women are not made to be broken.” Flora's inhabitation of each of the women's stories is performed with empathy, respect, and understanding.
Click Here to watch the films that will be part of the discussion: https://watch.eventive.org/rffs2021