Romanian film review – The summer of film: Operation Kino

You might call this the summer of TIFF (short for Transilvania International Film festival). After the festivals in Cluj, Sibiu and a brand new one in Miercurea Ciuc, the ubiquitous TIFF films have been touring the country for open air screenings and will keep traveling until September. The Caravana TIFF/Operation Kino programme (which you can find here) might be modest but it's a solid mixing of foreign and Romanian films of all genres. The Romanian entries feature two likeable comedies, Despre oameni și melci/Of Snails and Men and Și caii sunt verzi pe pereți/Chasing Rainbows, the brilliantly tense drama Poziția copilului/Child's Pose, glossy historical enterntainment starring Gerard Depardieu and Harvey Keitel (Condamnat la viață/A Farewell to Fools) the and the very debatable (to put it mildly) Funeralii fericite. Of the foreign ones I would recommend Lore, a harrowing and clear-headed tale of post-World War Germany told through the eyes of a young woman with Nazi sympathies, An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, a passionate and formally modest documentary about a Roma family struggling to receive the most basic of medical care in today's Bosnia, the gorgeous Blancanieves, a loving homage to silent cinema, and the documentary The Last Black Sea Pirates, a very enjoyable crowd-pleaser. Caravana TIFF is all about the art of cinema but it's also about its inherent unifying potential. Films are meant to be seen in a community and the caravan is trying to reach audiences throughout the entire country and most of all in cities with a modest or outdated cultural profile. This is a major problem in Romania, where all major cultural events happen in Bucharest while the rest of the country is left with a few highlights a year - in the best of cases - or nothing at all in the bleakest and most common scenarios. I think TIFF has been doing a great job at breaking this pattern. The free entrance to all screenings is not just an act of generosity but I assume of necessity: the sad truth is that in a country where illegal downloading of films is done as casually as having breakfast, there is a large number of potential viewers who would not pay to see a movie. Finally, the fact that open air events are even more spectacular is just the icing on the (caravan) cake. I wonder though if this version of showing films, as beautiful and summery as it is, might also be a necessity since there are cities which have been left with no cinema halls at all and no proper possibilities to screen a film. The Caravan has already visited Cluj, Timișoara, Oradea and will stop next in Bistrița,