ROMANIAN DOCUMENTARY DURING COMMUNIST ERA
ROMANIAN DOCUMENTARY DURING COMMUNIST ERA

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 70ies, Romanian documentary had as central hub the Sahia Studios, a school of documentary film, based as much on the European trends as on the political changes in the country. Communism meant control and ideology forced upon the creator’s vision, censorship and, beyond that, selfcensorship. Many of the documentary creators decided to go on artsy subjects and themes and to treating subject in artistic ways, regardless the social or political content. Yet, some of them embraced the “socialist realism” and went with the flow. Documentary, over time, suffered numerous changes, both in expression as in style. Pier Paulo Pasolini advertised to the world (during the first New Cinema Festival, 1965) a new feature of cinematographic narration, which is critical to the documentary: “if the cinematographer identifies him/herself to his character and, through it, narrates of mirrors the world, he can not use the extraordinary differentiation tool which is language/ his action can not be linguistic, but stylistic.”7. Style is also a notion to define documentary authors and schools, and differentiate them. The style footprint was the one that brought the documentary closer to the fiction film (there are documentary directors that became fiction movie directors afterwards). And, alongside with the international trends, the Romanian documentary school stood out through the analytical and selective capacities, over the subject matter chosen to become documentaries. Among the documentary directors, the ‘70ies are the most tried by demolitions, earthquakes and fire. Thought as a symphony dedicated to human lack of power facing the unleashed elements, ,,Apa ca un bivol negru” (“Water as a Black Ox”) – signed by C-tin Vaeni, Dan Pi¡a, Cåtålin Båleanu, Mircea Veroiu, Dinu Tånase, Iosif Demian, Stere Gulea, Petre Bokor – impresses the spectator to fear and anguish solely by the plasticity of visual expression. This becomes the toughest confrontation to the reality, the viewer having all the time the feeling he/she might step in any minute. He/she could be trapped in the middle of the catastrophe and lose it all and weep alongside with the other characters and may be become the hero of the events. Especially in the collective drama scenes, the viewer gets the sense of solidarity through the means of assuming the catastrophe. The persuasive power lies in the “material reality of the image”, thus explained by Marcel Martin: “...the camera is a simple recording tool, designed to capture images on film. As soon as human intervenes, what is called by scientists the personal equation appears (…) and it results in a subjective view of the world – that of the cinematographer.”8 Documentaries as ,,Apoi s-a nåscut ora¿ul” (“Then the City Was Born”) or ,,Apa ca un bivol negru” (“Water as a Black Ox”) offer us a new vision of the things that get born and die, but also a vision of our passing memory

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