For the fourth consecutive year, Romania’s capital city played host
\nto the popular Bucharest International Dance Film Festival. Unique in Romania,
\nthe Festival is produced by the TangajDance Association and offers film
\nscreens, performances, workshops and exhibitions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Every year the festival revolves around a core theme. This year it
\nis called RETRACING. Choreographer Simona Deaconescu, the festival’s artistic
\ndirector, told us more:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
2018 is the year of the
\nGreat Union Centennial, and we’ve given this event due consideration. To me and
\nmy team the last 100 years are very important. Hence we’ve tried to represent
\nit from the point of view of people who’ve experienced this period, whether
\nwe’re talking about generations of people who lived in this period, the way
\nthey endured and the perseverance with which they tried to live their lives and
\nfulfil their dreams… Even if the festival has this historic theme, it very
\nmuch refers to the way people conceive history, their personal interpretation
\nof it. It focuses on people’s perception of history through the lens of their
\nmodern life, looking out to the future as well. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
On the first day of the festival, organisers screened Midnight
\nSpecials, A selection of Romanian archive films, a program curated in
\ncooperation with the Bucharest National Dance Centre, which hosted the
\nscreening. Here is Corina Cimpoieru, a consultant with the Research Department
\nof the National Dance Centre with more details:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Dance film does not have an
\nofficial or unofficial history, in the sense of a systematic approach to dance
\nor setting up a film genre as such. It is rather a retrospective and
\nretroactive outlook on the history of Romanian dance, an effort that the
\nNational Dance Centre started a few years back by means of a series of projects
\nin cooperation with the National Film Archive. As a result, we have identified
\nscattered dance sequences in difference film genres, from silent films to dance
\nreports, newsreels from the 50s, documentary art films produced by the
\nAlexandru Sahia Film Studios and so on… <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The Festival’s agenda also included film screenings outside the
\nofficial competition. One such film is the Romanian 3D feature My life
\nrehearsed in one leg, directed by Bogdan Mustata, with choreography by Iulia
\nWeiss. It is an experimental 3D film, says film director and script writer
\nBogdan Mustata, the recipient of the Golden Bear Award for best short film at
\nthe 2008 International Berlin Film Festival for A Good Day for a Swim. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I started out from a series
\nof technicalities that have to do with film directing… I wanted to work without
\na narrative and have characters stripped of psychological and social substance
\nand just use the tools at my disposal, engage in a simple dialogue with them,
\nwithout touching on human psychology and knowledge of life… Then I started to
\nbuild on that, discussing what we can do with our bodies, and how we can use it.
\n<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bogdan Mustata also wrote the script, which is an analysis of the
\nrelation between memory and personal identity. Bogdan Mustata: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
There were two relations.
\nOne was based on quotes from the films, the other on quotes from theatre plays,
\nand I selected the films and the plays from memory. I was interested to see how
\nthese memories, many of them false and fabricated, help define a person’s
\nidentity… The films do not all belong to the same genre and are easy to recognize:
\nHiroshima, Last Year at Marienbad, but also Armageddon or Before
\nSunrise. In the case of Before Sunrise, I for one was interested in the kind
\nof feeling you get when you meet a stranger and you can redefine yourself,
\ntelling him everything about yourself. This is what makes meeting new people
\nspecial. Anything you hate about yourself can change, because you are telling
\nthe story and only you can chose what you say to him. You start making new
\nmemories. And these feelings and memories create a new identity for us. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Since 2016, the Bucharest International Dance
\nFilm Festival has channeled a substantial part of its resources into creating a
\nmarket for the film dance in Romania, by encouraging artists in putting
\ntogether such productions. This is how the National Competition section of the
\nFestival was created. Two years later, the number of applications for this
\nsection has tripled. States Uprooted, the stage direction and choreography of
\nwhich belong to Ioana Turcan, was chosen the best Romanian short film, out of
\nthe 10 productions shortlisted this year. The film tackles different identities
\nand perceptions, different transition rituals, and uprooting in Romania and the
\nUS. Ioana Turcan says the scenes were shot during her travels in 2012-2017, but
\nnot especially for this short film:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
This
\nis how I work. I have created a personal audiovisual archive, which I keep
\nupdating every time I travel. I started doing that when I left for the US, in
\n2012. I was on a ‘Work and Travel’ programme. I would spend 3 months in the US
\nand the rest of the year in Romania. And I noticed social differences, as well
\nas differences in terms of outlook, approaches, identity and perceptions. Since
\nI was spending a lot of time there, this issue affected me. I no longer knew
\nhow to look at myself. So the idea was to make a film suitable for screening
\nnot only in cinema halls, but one that expresses my desire to experiment with
\nthe environment. Because it has dance scenes, fight scenes, various types of
\nvideo performances, so it is pretty experimental, interdisciplinary I’d say.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The winner of the International Competition,
\nout of the 20 entries, was Night Dancing, a Romanian-British co-production
\ndirected by Barney Cokeliss, with choreography by Louise Tanoto, Jacob Ingram-Dodd
\nand Jason Thorpe.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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