By Dumitru Marian
Republic of Moldova
The film history of the Republic of Moldova is still closely connected with the name of Emil Loteanu, whose TABOR UCHODIT V NEBO / GYPSIES ARE FOUND NEAR HEAVEN (Soviet Union 1976), the winner of the Golden Seashell at the 1976 San Sebastian Film Festival, became a cult classic throughout Eastern Europe. This year, the Chisinau-based Cronograf documentary film festival screened EMIL LOTEANU: GYPSY WALTZ (Russia, 2005). Michail Juravkin, a student of Loteanu’s, portrays the world of the Moldova-born director through the personal remembrances of his colleagues. With Cronograf, Moldova hosts an international film event specialising in documentary film. However, the domestic documentary scene is facing a number of problems concerned with funding, the market situation, and indirect attempts of the agencies of State to exert influence. Incidentally, when it comes to Moldova’s culture, politics, NGO life, and so on, it mainly takes place in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau. There is even a separate average salary calculated for Chisinau, which is two times the average salary in the countryside.
A Brief Encounter With History
In 1952, the Ministry of Culture of the USSR founded the Studio for Chronicles and Documentary in Chisinau. The roots of Moldova Film were thus established. In the first two years, all films were directed and produced by a staff educated either in Moscow or Odessa. In 1957, the studio was reorganised following a decision of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Republic of Moldova. Renamed Moldova Film, it became a production facility for both fiction and documentary film. It is still active, transformed into a shareholder company in which the State owns the full complement of shares. In 1959, Telefilm-Chisinau was founded as studio for documentary and fiction films, focused primarily on music films. Though there is no production at the moment, the studio hasn’t been officially closed. In the Soviet Union, Moldova was among the larger production states, comparable to the Armenian SSR, the Georgian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR.
Only a few documentary films of the Soviet period gained international renown, among them Vlad Iovita’s FINTINA (THE WELL, 1966), which depicts the way Moldovan people dig wells. In the same year, Gheorghe Voda’s poetic DE-ALE TOAMNEI / FALL STUFF has been discussed for a while. In the 70’s, Iovita made a blacklisted film, PIATRA, PIATRA / STONE, YOU, STONE, a depiction of mining in stone-pits, banned because it showed tired, dirty people coming out of mine-shafts, which, due to the opinion of party officials, compromised the spirit of the Socialist life.
Immediately after the crash of the USSR, the entire state film activity was reorganized by founding a Cinema Center as a Government department. In 2001, it became an independent Department of Cinema. It has been replaced since by a Cinema Directorate as a part of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. At the moment, the cinema activity is regulated by the Directorate of Arts and Art Education, and the state film funding budget of approximately 3.000,000 MDL (180.000 € ) is administrated by Moldova Film.
In the early nineties, the first generation of young filmmakers went to the Bucharest Academy for Film and Theatre to study scriptwriting, cinematography and directing. The generation educated in that period is still very influential on today’s Moldovan filmmaking.
A Limited Independence Of Film Production
The first independent film production companies appeared in the mid-nineties. In 1995, the Open World House (OWH) TV Studio was created as result of a project of the Soros Foundation, initially designed as a long-term workshop where young journalists could practice their skills in the field of audiovisual technologies. Four years later, it was registered as an independent organisation. Since then, it expanded its focus from TV production to cinematic documentaries, dedicated to social issues. Though a number of production studios were founded in the recent period, the OWH remains the only one specialised in documentaries, while several of it's former members, like Igor Cobileanski or Marin Turea, make films on an independent basis.
Some other independent filmmakers, like Vlad Druck, Mircea Chistruga, Dumitru Olarescu, Mihai Poiata, make documentaries on their own, with funding coming from various private sources. Independent filmmakers or studios form the majority of the Moldavian Filmmakers’ Union, which was created in 1962 as a subdivision of the Filmmakers’ Union of the USSR. Initially, it had 40 members; currently there are about 200. Its purpose was to gather filmmakers, to organize screenings, discussions etc., but over the past years it was also often involved in the political struggles evolving around Moldova Film, which sometimes turned into a battle for a share in the film fund budget, often marked by rumours and defamations.
In 1999, the shooting of ARIA, a film about the life of the Moldovan opera singer Maria Cebotari who mainly lived and worked in Germany was announced. This long-in-development project by Vlad Druck was finally finished after eight years, spending huge amounts (by local parametres) of subsidies, which became a matter of controversy among the film professionals. The production of the film was supported by the Department of Cinema of Moldova – actually the same fund administered by Moldova Film at the moment.
The Mold-Cinema company was founded in 2003, as a shareholder company under the control of the Cinema Directorate of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, aiming to manage the national film archive. Since then, complaints arose regarding the company’s inflexibility, lack of transparency, and price fixing. For both domestic and foreign filmmakers, getting access to the old footage became a difficult task. Complaints were made about the bureaucratic steps that had had to be circumvented for the use of archival material, and about the comparably high licence fees.
An almost incomprehensible bureaucratic mechanism also lead to a lack of access to the film funds for independent producers. As a result, independent filmmakers tried to shut Moldova Film down. In 2006, a memorandum of the Filmmakers’ Union asked for the company to be disbanded, but the majority of the signatories draw back their signatures after a couple of weeks. Currently, the Moldovan film scene is split into two factions: Moldova Film and the Filmmakers’ Union. As the amount they fight for is scanty, the majority of young filmmakers, getting the impression that the struggle is turning into more and more of an issue of personal pride, try to stay away from it. The younger generation attempts, through festivals and meetings, to focus on an international audience.
Over the last few years, state subsidies for film production increased several times – from 200,000 MDL (approximately 12,500 €) in 2002, to 3.000,000 MDL (approximately 180,000 €) in 2006. The funding was being given to Moldova Film productions exclusively, so that no independent producer or filmmaker had been supported – a fact that generated the aforementioned conflicts within the Moldovan film scene. Despite the name of the National Film Fund, the independent producers can mainly access projects on subjects imposed by the government. For example, 2007 was officially declared the year of the world-renowned composer Eugen Doga, so the Moldova Film administration “suggested” to filmmakers to apply with ideas for a film dedicated to him.
In 2005, a new law on cinema policies was approved, stipulating that private cinemas have to pay a tax – a percentage of ticket price – to finance a fund for the support of young filmmakers. Immediately after it came into power, the new law was fought on a political level. Through intensive lobbying, cinema owners got their way, and the law was abolished.
Talent Drain
The number of documentaries produced per year is definitely less than 20, though it is currently quite difficult to find out the exact number of films being produced. Statistics are lacking, and there is no unique marketplace or a screening venue for documentaries except the Cronograf film festival. Documentary films do not run in cinemas regularly, while reportage-style TV documentaries are only broadcast on channels reaching a small audience.
A Cinema and TV Department of the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts was founded in 1992. It offers a course in film direction, with the recent addition of a cinematography course. Unfortunately, the department is not permanent; it operates periodically, depending on the number of requests. Most talented Moldovan filmmakers follow in the footsteps of the older generation, who attended the Academy of Film and Theatre in Bucharest. Every year, it offers two scholarships for Moldovans. Most of the graduates do not return to Moldova, like Oleg Mutu, cinematographer of the globally successful Romanian arthouse film MOARTEA DOMNULUI LĂZĂRESCU (THE DEATH OF MR. LĂZĂRESCU, d.: Cristi Puiu, 2005) as well as the 2007 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner 4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMINI SI 2 ZILE (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, d.: Cristian Mungiu, 2007). Young, talented filmmakers also leave for other countries, like Pavel Cuzuioc, who studied in Vienna and has recently worked mainly in Romania and Austria. Last year, he made TREI FEMEI DIN MOLDOVA (THREE WOMEN FROM MOLDOVA), a co-production between Moldova, Romania and Austria. Other talents, like Pavel Braila (Germany), Veaceslav Druta (France), Lucia Macari (the Netherlands), Ana Felicia Scutelnic (Germany) or Igor Sherbina (Russia) return to Moldova for temporary projects.
As documentary production is less expensive, most of the directors who stay in Moldova start out with a documentary, though aiming toward fiction films. Facing the situation of a small market with limited financial resources, filmmakers are mostly forced to produce works commissioned by small local broadcasters with a small budget and low quality requirements.
The Screening Situation
Today, the territory of Moldova is covered by some 15 regional TV stations and another six channels based in Chisinau, two of them with national coverage. Their programming includes documentaries, but not on a regular basis. Having a low budget, they are not in the position to buy documentaries, so for the most part they screen documentaries dealing with social issues, and those donated by local producers, or international channels and organizations. As for the big channels, they prefer commercial features, which can reach a sizeable audience.
There are 44 rural and 14 municipal cinemas and cinema installations in the Republic of Moldova, with an annual audience of 5,000 and 26,000 cinemagoers, respectively. The high price of tickets leads to low audience figures, so the private cinemas in the towns of Chisinau, Balti, Cahul and Ungheni decided to diversify and provide space for additional, non-cinema activities, like marketing presentations and lotteries.
The Cronograf Film Festival is the only film festival in Moldova, now in its sixth year. It is exclusively dedicated to documentary film production, which, like the feature film production, faces continuous upheavals in Moldova. However, in May 2007, four Moldovan films were included in the international competition. Besides, the “cadRO” competition for films made within the Romanian communities in other countries was established, aiming to bring together films on the Romanian culture and society, beyond the limits of the Romanian state. One of the goals of the festival is to stress Moldova’s affiliation to the community of Romanian values. Besides, quite often there are weeks dedicated to a certain national cinema (e.g. French cinema, the American musical, the Japanese cinema), put together by foreign cultural institutions based in Moldova. Unfortunately, no documentaries have been shown during these weeks so far.
Current Subjects
The main topics of the current Moldovan documentary production deal with social issues, historic and ethnographic issues, migration, poverty, and the lack of economical opportunities. There are no taboo subjects, but it is dangerous to go filming in the Transdnestrian region. Some journalists who tried ended up losing their cameras and even spending days in detention. On the other hand, filmmakers feel a certain need to approach such subjects, but they lack experience, and the overall media situation also leads to frequent self-censorship.
There is a lack of critical approach, paralleled by a lack of investigative capacities, due to the low standards of journalism. As a permanent staff member of the CRONOGRAF Film Festival, I experienced this when journalists approached the Festival asking for ready-made reports, as they weren’t able to sort the available information into a succinct article. In 2006, the Independent Journalism Center initiated a project named the School of Advanced Journalism, which aims to prepare 20 students per year through a different way of teaching, based on practical exercises, and an individual approach to each student’s needs. The teachers there are mostly professionals from Moldova and abroad. Some of these graduates might make good investigative documentaries one day, depending on the market situation and the government attitude to the political support of the independent media.
On the other hand, a few remarkable films on social topics were made by independent producers. A MOTHER FROM THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS (2006) by Violeta Gorgos, which portrays the daily life in Moldova’s only prison for women, recently won the main prize at the Golden Beggar Festival for local TV broadcasters, held in Košice in the Slovak Republic. CHILD LABOR (d.: Leontina Vatamanu, 2005) deals with the acceptance of child exploitation in Moldova, and its physical and psychological effects on their health. The film was made as part of a project by the International Labor Organization. AFROMOLDOVANS (d.: George Agagenean, 2005) depicts the life of black people, mainly African immigrants, in Moldova, while SAN SANYCH (2005), also by George Agagenean, deals with a young boy trying to get by on his own in the urban misery of a post-Soviet society. FREEDOM TRIAL (d: Mircea Chistruga, 2006) reflects on the history of the military conflict in Transdnestria after 15 years of independence. Those films created a short-term vibe at different levels, depending to some extent on the team involved in their production. Some of them have been criticized, some of them praised, but the public discussion dissipated very fast.
In addition, a few directors from abroad make films about Moldova, being attracted by the poverty and the migration situation. Moldova still is regarded as Europe’s poorest country, while the economy is still stricken by a significant loss of young people, emigrating from the bad economic situation. Foreign production companies do their research and inquiries by using local staff, but those films often cause objections among locals who sometimes even feel offended – which raises the question if the foreign view is marked by a pejorative approach, or if filmmakers from abroad raise topics which domestic filmmakers do not want or do not dare to stress. Foreign filmmakers often come to make films on poverty, and they find poverty, because it exists for real. On the other hand, those subjects are explored due to a certain international market value they have, created by Moldova’s image as the poorest country in Eastern Europe.
Recent examples are the Swedish production CONNECTING WITH MOLDOVA (d: Kurt Skoog, 2006) on a social worker from Sweden who decided to make a film on the situation of disabled people she met during her stay in Moldova, the German production ZUSAMMEN FREMDGEHEN (TOGETHER ILLEGAL, d.: Hendrik Lobbert, Klaus Neumann, 2006), a film about the life of an illegal Moldovan immigrant and his family in Germany, and a new production by the Danish documentary filmaker Anja Dahlhoff, NATASHA IS NOT FOR SALE, about the potential victims of human trafficking and the possibilities of avoiding it.
Market Perspectives
The current market situation in Moldova does not allow filmmakers to do whatever they wish; there is no clear policy on selling films, and very few directors promote their films abroad. So far, the local TV market has been the main target, due to a lack of information on selling documentaries internationally. So the TV channels are the only screening option for documentaries, but the situation is gradually improving. In July 2007, a new audiovisual code, The Law of Media Means, was passed. It stipulates that by 2008, eighty percent of the local TV broadcasts has to originate nationally, which should give a new incentive for producers, and lead to a reshuffle of the financial relations between producers and broadcasters. So far, several TV channels have considered a reorganisation of their programming. The local channels have contacted several producers over the last few months, inquiring about their films. Unfortunately, the rates are going to be quite low for now, but the perspective is real. Most filmmakers do not know where to get funding for their projects, as there are no producers focused on international funds. Very few Moldovan filmmakers have ever participated in a pitching forum. Moldovan films are rarely sent to international festivals, as the filmmakers are not quite sure whether their films are competitive or not.
As for the selling of Moldovan films abroad, a certain potential exists, but international contacts are lacking, and so are the skills to get a position within the international market. This situation seems to be slowly changing, considerIng a growing number of international coproductions. Recently, Pavel Braila started the Moldovan-French VIDEO COACH, while OWH initiated the Romanian-Moldovan WEDDING IN BESSARABIA. Still, Moldova lacks certain key facilities for film production, like a film processing laboratory, which adds to production costs. On the other hand, Moldova’s level of international integration seems to be increasing, as shown by initiatives like the one by the Austrian company Stage and Studio, which intends to open a film equipment rental house in Chisinau.
Dumitru Marian Biography
Born on 28th of October, 1979 in the central part of Moldova, Ungheni county. In 2001 graduated the Technical University of Moldova, major in micro-electronics.
After changing several jobs looking for his own self, in 2003 video editor in the news department at Euro TV Chisinau.
In a collaboration with OWH, translating and dubbing in the films for the 3rd edition of Cronograf Film Festival.In September 2004, becoming cinema editor and film translator at at OWH TV Studio where he lately became executive producer, developing several film projects. Representing his company at different international and national film festivals.
Being interested in a continuous professional development, Marian constantly participates at national and international trainings, like the one-month-training at Scuola Nazionale di Cinema (National Film School), Rome, Italy in November-December, 2006, at the moment participating at ESoDOC 2007 (European Social Documentary).
