THR: Romanian Filmmakers Launch Campaign to Stop Cinema Closures
The country, which has produced an internationally acclaimed new wave of filmmakers, has lost more than 400 cinemas to closure and neglect over the past 20 years.
By Nick Holdsworth
CLUJ, ROMANIA -- Romanian filmmakers have launched a campaign to save the country's fast disappearing single screen cinemas.
The campaign -- "Save the Big Screen" -- aims to prevent the further closure of state-owned theaters and rebuild a network of urban art house cinemas to help revive the distribution of domestic films.
More than 400 cinemas have closed down since Romania's revolution 25 years ago, leaving the country with just 30 single screen, downtown theaters and more than three quarters of towns and cities without a cinema.
Construction of new, privately-owned out of town multiplexes have made up for some of the loss of screens, but organizers of the campaign argue that those cinemas rarely show arthouse or locally-made films.
Under Communism, Romania's cinemas were all state-owned. Following the fall of the Ceaucescu regime in 1989, public funding for distribution and exhibition all but disappeared and cinemas were closed or converted to other uses. Many were simply abandoned and left to rot.
Ironically, the loss of coincided with a period when Romanian filmmakers have achieved worldwide recognition for films such as Cristian Mungui's Cannes Golden Palm-winning film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
"The situation for distributors of domestic films has become so acute that we are forced to use mobile cinemas to get our films out to audiences around the country," Tudor Giurgiu, founder of Bucharest production company Libra Film and head of the Transilvania International Film Festival, told The Hollywood Reporter.
