Editor

Spanning the 30 years since the 1989 Romanian Revolution, this comprehensive showcase is curated by Making Waves and presents titles from the recent history of Romanian cinema, among which are a selection of films that have never been screened before in Seattle. 

In the 1990s, directors who found themselves freed from the tyranny of censorship rushed out in the open to tell stories from the recent past. In the following two decades, younger directors went back in time on their own terms and came up with a fresh perspective on the communist era. Even when they chronicled the present in sharp slices of life, the dark shadows of the past still permeated their contemporary stories, like familiar ghosts.

In 2005, a three hour-long black comedy about a dying man, The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (dir. Cristi Puiu), was part of the birth of an artistic revolution that ignited an ever-growing international interest in an outstanding generation of filmmakers. It also triggered the rediscovery of past highlights which offered a genealogy for what critics came to call the Romanian New Wave.

Newer films dig into the more distant though equally relevant past, and there is also escapism, mostly in genre formats. But despite its apparent diversity, this vast retrospective works best as a history lesson served in the most entertaining form: movies.