Facts about the project
Project managers and members
Liviu Lutas
Other project members
–
Participating organisations
Linnaeus University
Financier
–
Timetable
1 August 2023 – 30 June 2024
Subject
Film and Literary Studies (Department of Film and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Humanities)
Research groups
Linnaeus University Centre (Lnuc) for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)
More about the project
In 2001, Romanian film director Cristi Puiu released his first feature film, Marfa si banii, a film that is considered as the starting point of the Romanian New Wave (Nasta 2013, Pop 2014, Stojanova 2019). This is a number of films, directed among others by Puiu himself, but also by Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristian Mungiu, Radu Jude, Radu Muntean, Calin Peter Netzer and Adina Pintilie, that are related both formally and idelogically. Mainly it is, formally, about raw realism and minimalistic film language, and idelogically about a critical position against the country’s dominant ideology, both during Communism and after. It is important to note that the films do not vehiculate an obvious ideological critique, especially because of their film language, but rather present the situation in Romania in so objective a way as possible. The films have achieved considerable success after 2001 in contexts that are to be classified as quality films, that is in film festivals such as Cannes (with the prize ”Un certain regard” in 2005 for Puiu’s The Death of Mr Lazarescu, and the Golden Palm in 2008 for Mungiu’s 5 Months, 4 Weeks, 3 Days as the climax) and Berlin (with the Golden Bear three times, in 2013 for Netzer’s Child’s Pose, in 2018 for Pintilie’s Touch me not and in 2021 för Jude’s Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc). They have been shown mainly in cinemas for quality films, such as the cinemas from the European Cinemas network.
Romanian New Wave has been the subject of many academic studies. From the formal point of view, their obvious realistic and minimalistic characteristics have led to other aspects being neglected. Some attempts have been made, among others by myself in Stojanova’s anthology from 2019, to analyse elements that, at a first glance do not seem to fit neither with their formal nor with their ideological characteristics.
Intermediality is such an element, and its use can be interesting to examine in detail in these films. The aim is not to criticize the generally accepted view of these films’ realism and minimalism, but to highlight how important intermediality really is. Such a project can be conducted successfully at the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, the research centre att Linnaeus Universty which can be considered to be the best suited for studies of intermediality.
The project is part of the research in the Linnaeus University Centre (Lnuc) for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)
