Film Critique in Romania, Film Critique in the World: Interview with Flavia Dima

Flavia Dima is film critic & journalist based in Bucharest, Romania. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short fim festival, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies.

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Tettyo Saito (TS): At first, why do you want to be a film critic? How did you become a film critic?

Flavia Dima (FD): Well, long story short: I’m a journalism graduate and I was in Cluj for my BA studies – the same city that hosts TIFF, Romania’s largest international film festival. One of our university professors worked at the time, for AperiTIFF (which is the festival’s daily newspapers) so each year he could take up to four journalism students in the newsroom, as volunteers. After three years of aquainting myself with the festival from inside and seeing up to six films a day during TIFF, one thing led to another and, well, here I am, in short.

As to why I want to be a film critic... well, beyond the urgency that you sometimes feel in participating in the discourse about contemporary cinema (& not only), I feel that this is a moment in time when critical positions are all the more necessary, to put it briefly. I’ll also not deny that it’s a field of work that is sometimes extremely rewarding (if not financially, at least on a spiritual level) – especially when the line of work involves spending a lot of time inside the cinema, in the immediate presence of works of cinematic art.

TS: When you started to be interested in movie, what movies did you watch? And what kind of movies could you watch in Romania at that time?

FD: Well, I’m not gonna lie – torrents were my main ally in gathering my base knowledge on cinema, haha. It’s also due to the fact that video rental stores were already practically extinct in Romania by that moment and public library videotheques over here are veeery underwhelming, most of the time.
One saving grace was the fact that I lived in Cluj at the time, which is a city with a very strong and active cinema culture and it’s also the host of TIFF (which in many ways was my true alma mater), in spite of the fact that it doesn’t have a cinematheque of its own. At the time, the town’s flagship art cinema, Cinema Victoria, was running a very nice programme: the 3 PM screenings were free of charge for students and pensioners, and they were usually screening the „unpopular” films at that hour, meaning the more artistically and formally challenging ones. (In fact, that’s how I first came across one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers, Bruno Dumont – with a screening of Camille Claudel 1915.) Being a penniless journalism student, I’d end up spending every second day at the 3 PM screening, which by that point had gathered a semi-legendary status amongst students. That was also the place where I started coming into contact with students from the local film college department and socializing about cinema. It’s a period in my life that was quite romantic in a certain sense, and I often find myself being very nostalgic about it.

As for what movies... An uncle of mine gifted me a copy of the 1001 films before you die book, so it was a very handy place to start brushing up on my classics. And, not gonna lie, as much as I hate listicles – if you’re an entry-level cinephile, all those lousy TEN PSYCHEDELIC FILMS THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND lists that mention Antonioni, Chitilova, Parajanov, Jodorovski and so on are quite handy, haha.

TS: How is the current situation about film critique in Romania? From outside, it is very good because there are many talented critics, who're successful beyond Romania, like Călin Boto, Diana Smeu, Andreea Pătru and you. But from inside, how do you see the situation?

FD: I’m glad it looks good from the outside, at least, haha. Indeed, the people you named, along with another amazing few – such as Andrei Gorzo, Irina Trocan, Georgiana Mușat, and the entirety of the FILM MENU collective, along with others who have migrated onto curatorship, such as Oana Ghera and Andrei Tănăsescu – are the main core and driving force, as things stand now. It’s amazing that their work manages to cross boundaries and be internationally relevant, in spite of all the challenges of this line of work.

Others however tend to cultivate an image that is oriented towards the local film market – being, at times, excessively friendly to it, I believe, even though I do realize that in the current climate a lot of job opportunities for critics arise from „partisan” institutions, rather than neutral publications. They very rarely write negative reviews (or they only do it when it’s easy pickings and has little to no effect on them), or trying to cultivate an “apolitical” persona that sees cinema as an object more or less detached from the workings of quotidian life. They’re also the ones to land the most paid gigs, though, so... I’m quite afraid that we’re in the middle of this honeymoon phase kind of bubble that will burst, sooner or later, as we become increasingly faced with the realities of making a living out of this, in a job market that is extremely unstable and precarious.

TS: You participate in the online film magazine named Acoperișul de Sticlă. Could you please explain about this film magazine to Japanese people? And what is its function on Romanian cinema or film critique in Romania?

Acoperișul de Sticlă was, in the middle of this decade, a stronghold for independent film criticism, as FILM MENU was at the time submerged in an immense institutional conflict with the local theatre and film univerisity, UNATC. Irina Trocan and Andra Petrescu, who’d also been involved the first iteration of FILM MENU, were the main architects of the project, inspired by other like-minded slow film criticism websites. Beyond the fact that it always cultivated a very open intellectual platform and especially friendly to young writers and cinema students, Acoperișul de Sticlă was unique because critics who were interested in political aspects of cinema, such as me, or Alex Miricioi and other writers, could find a home for their writing and their views of contemporary film. It was very effervescent, and we poured our hearts into it.

Now that most of the old newsroom is facing day-to-day issues, the magazine has been on a sort of hiatus lately, but right now we’re working on a comeback that should shake things up a bit, hehe.

TS: How did you participate in Acoperișul de Sticlă? And what meaning is it to you as a film critic?

FD: I cannot stress this enought, but Acoperișul de Sticlă made me who I am today – it was where I cut my teeth as a critic, if I can say so. I mainly wrote reviews and was a gigantic headache for Irina Trocan, Alex Mircioi and Georgiana Mușat – but also a friend, haha. It was where I learned to explore my thoughts on cinema, to give them shape and to build the majority of my publishing experience, along with a space to discover many amazing films though the writings of my colleagues. A true, true gift.

TS: You and fellow critics write the articles named "Girls on Film" on Acoperișul de Sticlă, about female directors and their films. I'm amazed especially by the article about Věra Chytilová. What does "writing about female directors on Romanian magazine" mean?

FD: Thank you so much! „Girls on Film” is a project that was, and still is unique in the millieu of Romanian film criticism and writing: meaning, a series that is solely focused on female filmmakers, functioning as a means to bring female auteurs who have been unfairly overlooked in the history of cinema – even up until the very first female director in history, Alice Guy-Blache – and to restore them in front of the public eye.

Alex Mircioi is the mastermind of the project, so most of the credit goes to him, in this respect. It’s a groundbreaking series for Romania: the first such local project that took on an impressive size to promote female filmmakers, both from world cinema and Romanian cinema, in a climate that is still very much ignorant of female directors (if not outright misogynistic). I’m very proud to be able to have contributed to such a necessary and ambitious project.

TS: What is the difference between writing in English and writing in Romanian?

FD: Hmm, tricky question. Of course, I am much more at ease in Romanian since it’s my native language, after all, so I’m more playful – I find that many of my English pieces are quite... somber? Let’s just say I take more poetic licenses in Romanian, haha.

The other problem is, well, quite natural – in English, I’m naturally facing a way larger audience, along with, conversely, a field that is much more saturated and competitive: so, it’s key for me to know the playing field and research my topics quite well before I start writing something, since I know that having something new and unique to say on the topic is essential to making my article relevant, whether it’s a review, an interview, a report or analysis.

TS: You participate in many film festivals like Berlin, Locarno, Sarajevo etc. What does this participation in film festivals mean as a Romanian critic?

Pragmatically? I’m usually the one of the local first critics to write a text about a Romanian film that premieres in one of the festivals, haha, which gives a nice head start. You sort of feel responsible about laying the foundations about it’s discourse, which is always exciting, along with knowing you’re one of the select few who get to see the film without knowing what to expect (but that’s a general feeling). Other than that, I feel that it’s a very important moment to establish connections to the international publishing sphere, and to get our work out to larger audiences.

TS: One of your best work is the article about Edward Yang on Kinoscope. Very powerful, provocative piece of art. How did you find Edward Yang and his films? Is he famous in Romania?

Thank you so much! I’d have to say that Edward Yang isn’t at all famous over here, unfortunately, save for a couple of cinephiles. I don’t even know if his films were ever screened in Romania – and I’m trying to popularize his amazing body of work as much as I can. I screened A Brighter Summer Day for my students last spring – and the ones that made it through the marathon four-hour screening were shellschocked.

I discovered Yang because I was passing through a phase in which I was sort of questioning my own film culture and its values, and realizing that it’s very eurocentric – so, I set out to challenge this by watching a lot of East-Asian cinema (of which I knew mainly the works of absolute masters such as Kurosawa & Wong Kar-Wai), so I began devouring auteurs such as Hong Sang-Soo, Tsai Ming-liang, Apichatpong Weerasethakhul, Nagisa Oshima and so on. And that’s how I found Edward Yang, mainly.

But I’d be lying if I left out a key element to this story: I’d seen a fan-made music video to a dreampop song called Nice to See You a while ago which used footage from Taipei Story, that had absolutely no hint as to where the footage was taken from in the description or comments, yet still, I found myself coming back again to see the beautiful shots of Chin on a rooftop, flanked by the shining lights of a Fujifilm neon commercial. The images haunted me for quite some time, until I stumbled onto an article about Yang which used frames from those exact scenes. So now that I had solved the mystery, naturally, I did everything in my power to get a copy of the film – and the rest is history.

TS: Who is the most influential Romanian writer (film or literature critic, philosopher, novelist etc) to you?

FD: Hmmm, tough question. In terms of cinema, I’d have to point out Andrei Gorzo and Christian Ferencz-Flatz, who, in my opinion, are the most vital contemporary intellectuals and theoreticians approaching the field. If we were to expand the question, however, my primary impulse would be to name the Romanian surrealist group – and chief amongst them Gellu Naum, Geo Bogza and Gherasim Luca – as writers that have highly shaped my tastes and interests, although it might not show in my work.

TS: Who is the Romanian film critic whose work cinephiles in the world should read or be translated? (I want to translate it to Japanese!)

FD: Well, to my own knowledge, no Romanian writings on film have ever been translated, so I’d have to recommend things along the foundational route: Andrei Gorzo’s writings on the New Romanian Cinema, and the late Alex. Leo Serban, who in many ways was the father figure of contemporary Romanian film criticism.

TS: What contemporary Romanian films are the most important? (From my perspective as a foreign person, Radu Jude's "Inimi cicatrizate" and Corneliu Porumboiu's "Polițist, adjectiv")

FD: Well, I’m working on assembling a list of the decade’s best films right now (according to critics), so I’ll try to keep things under wraps for the moment, but a personal list that spans the last 30 years would definitely include the late works of Lucian Pintilie, early Puiu and Porumboiu films, Andrei Ujică’s entire body of work (that I believe is ultimately the only director who was decidedly and visibly influential outside of Romania, too) and, of course, Radu Jude – who, to me, is the most innovative and prolific Romanian director right now. And, of course, I’d like to mention a couple of female filmmakers that are decidedly influential right now and whose work will change the general landscape in the years to come, such as Adina Pintilie, Ivana Mladenovic, Ana Lungu and Teona Galgoțiu.

TS: When movie lovers in Japan want to know Romanian cinema history, what Romanian films should they see? And why?

FD: I think there are many entrance points into Romanian cinema – chief amongst them, the „genre” approach or the historical one. Well, assuming that you’re asking about art cinema that predates the Romanian revolution, I’d suggest getting into the works of Lucian Pintile, Mircea Daneliuc and Alexandru Tatos as a gateway. It’s a body of works that is not only iconic in terms of dissidence and the mythology they were surrounded with (especially Pintilie’s The Reenactment), it’s also one that greatly inspired contemporary filmmakers, especially Puiu. For those who would however prefer to enjoy films that are rather on the more playful side of the spectrum, I’d recommend Ion Popescu-Gopo and Elisabeta Bostan.

TS: How do you think about the future of film critique in Romania? Bright or dark?

Pitch dark with the sole exception of some guiding lights, I’m afraid. It’s extremely difficult to keep outlets afloat and to encourage new talents in the absence of a large readership or any sort of financial support or stable jobs in the field – it’s unfortunate to say that, at one point, simply getting free tickets to a premiere and then using the occasion to brutalize the post-screening buffet because you’re starving is not sufficient. An aggravating factor is that the mainstream media, with extremely few exceptions, isn’t employing full-time critics anymore. Major outlets only cover the bare minimum about Romanian cinema in spite of its status as a national brand, preferring to send out journalists to write fluff pieces and bare news, who are rewriting (or blatantly copy-pasting) whatever PR agents are throwing in their general direction, with obviously horrendous effects on the quality of public discourse and awareness about cinema. And on the topic of PR, well, that’s a whole new branch that is eating critical discourse alive, and professionals too – it’s a larger work of field in the industry and it’s obviously much better paid.

So, unfortunately, film criticism in Romania is slowly, increasingly turning into a hobby in spite of its effervescence and of pretty large numbers of young critics entering the festival workshop circuit. For those of us that wish to follow a professional career in the field, it’s hard to get across without the stability of an unrelated dayjob (as it is with many creative fields, globally, unfortunately) or without running for cover into the arms of academia. I’ve got the chance to experiment with teaching, which was amazing and vital on many levels – but it’s still far away from the beating heart of film and its arteries: the cinema and the festival circuit.