WELCOME to Romania, land of gypsies, vampires – and movies.
Few would have thought just five years ago that the former Communist nation would become a powerhouse of cutting-edge cinema.
But, alas, it has, thanks in large part to three films that won prizes at festivals and made many critics’ top 10 lists (mine included).
First came Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005), the heartbreaking story of an dying old man who is refused medical help. It was followed by Corneliu Porumboiu’s “12:08 East of Bucharest” (2007), an outrageous satire, and Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (2007), in which a young woman undergoes a back-street abortion during the Communist era.
Since 2001, Romania has even hosted a prestigious film festival each summer in the historic Transylvanian city Cluj-Napoca. I went in 2004, and saw an interesting array of films from around the world. (If there were any vampires lurking about, I didn’t encounter them.)
Starting Wednesday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will sponsor a festival of Romanian movies – eight recent ones and 10 made before 1989, the year Communist strongman Nicolae Ceausescu was driven from power.
“There’s an exciting rawness to the new Romanian cinema, a refusal to make things nice or palatable to audiences, that has somehow conversely actually worked in its favor,” Richard Pena, the film society’s program director, told me last week.
The new entries include “Lazarescu” and “12:08,” as well as Tudor Giurgiu’s “Love Sick” (2006), in which a country girl falls for a city boy, and Ruxandra Zenide’s story of sexual identity, “Ryna” (2005).
One of the golden oldies is Lucian Pintilie’s “Sunday at Six” (1965), a tale of star-crossed lovers that, says the film society, “ushered the style and look of European modernist cinema into Romanian filmmaking.”
The series runs through April 27 at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater; filmlinc.com.
“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” meanwhile, continues a successful run at the IFC Center in the West Village.
V.A. Musetto is film editor of The Post; [email protected]