2018 Revival ARA Congress
ROMANIA AT THE GREATER UNION CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY
Invited Speakers
Irina Margareta Nistor
Freelancer, Director and organizer of a Psychoanalysis and Film Festival Bucharest, Romania
PRESENTATION: A Century+ of Romanian Cinema
Born in 1957, BA of Foreign Languages (French and English), University of Bucharest (1980), with a thesis about Jean Cocteau and his cinema-poetry, she worked for The Romanian Television from 1980 until 1999, first as a film translator, then as a program producer. Since 2000 she is a free-lancer!
She had translated and subtitled over 900 movies and she had dubbed live (voice-over) over 5000, on video (from English, French, Italian and Spanish, during Ceauşescu’ time… illegally). A documentary was made about that by Ilinca Calugareanu: “Chuck Norris vs Communism”, premiered in Sundance Film Festival, and in Edinburgh, Hague, Berlin, London, New York, Los Angeles, Prague, Warsaw, Buenos Aires etc. She produced ``Video Guide’’ one hour long program on new films, videotapes and satellites issues, aired every three weeks, ``A Series of Series’’, about TV soaps and serials- one-hour program aired every two weeks and, ``Screen’’, half an hour program about domestic and foreign cinema, every two Saturdays, as well as “From Comics to Movies”, “Film Lexicon” or “Film Puzzle”, “Cinema Spot” etc.
She also produced a series of film documents, about the history of news- reels in Romania- starting with 1957, the year of the beginning of TV in her country, followed by 1958 and 1959, ``Is History Repeating Itself?’’ She made the portrait of the most famous Romanian comedian, Toma Caragiu. Irina Nistor contributed commentaries on radio: Total, Delta RFI, Guerrilla, Radio Gold etc, and articles for the print media, „Evenimentul Zilei’’ (for 5 years she covered the TV week-end recommendations), TV-Mania (where she wrote about the big screen releases and was also a consultant in the movie field). She was chief- editor to two cinema magazines: “Cinema Paradiso” and, “Avanpremiera” and contributed at “Privirea” magazine.
She translated, from English and French over 90 books, novels and dictionaries and theatre plays (Agatha Christie, Helen Edmunson, David Hare, August Strindberg, Chekhov, etc.).
Between 1995-1998, she was a programming director at Romsat, American cable Television dealing with the translation team, the relation with the press and choosing programs out of the Orion movies, Discovery, Travel and Knowledge Channels, and also producing over 150 programs (of 10’ to 20’)– „Perpetuum Mobile’’ (10 a month) about the big screen movies and the local movies.
She interviewed live the Ambassadors of Great Britain, France, Brazil, Ireland and Portugal, and also Canada and Finland and film personality such as Giuliano Gemma, Rutger Hauer, Sam Karmann, Park Chan Wook, Anthony Minghella, Yann Tiersen, Grace Zabriskie, Pim Van Hoeve, Michael Nyman, Bernard Pivot, Alan J.Pakula, Bruce Beresford, July Délpy, Francis Ford Coppola, Barbet Schroeder, Régis Wargnier, François Ozon , Alain Corneau, Benoît Magimel, Jean-Claude Carrière, Peter Ustinov, Frédéric Mitterrand, Ken Loach, Peter Greenaway, Charles Aznavour, K. Zanussi, Mike Reiss, Michael.O Meallaigh , Petru Popescu, Tim Robbins, Klaus Maria Brandauer ...
She attended the Salzburg Seminar organized by USA, and covered film festivals in Karlovy-Vary, Reims, Stockholm, Montreux, Buenos Aires, Namur, Rome, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Sundance, Tokyo and San Sebastian. She made a video program, in French, for TV5, ``Romanian Cinema after 1989’’ and one about the impact of the American Series, ``Dallas’’ over the Romanian viewers, for TVR1. She took part as an expert to the Audiovisual Communication and Language Transfer (June 1995), organized by UNESCO and the Council of Europe and to 8 European Film and Television Forums.
She was also a member of juries for the Soros Foundation, 1995 Dakino Film Festival and an artistic director for the 1996 Costineşti Film Festival as well as a selector for “Anonimul Film Festival” in 2004 and 2005, for shorts and from the 2008 edition up to 2015, and also for “Where is the Love?” in 2005-2006. She was a juror for the Romanian Film Makers Union’ Awards, Gopo Awards, Future Shorts, Betting on Shorts, TIFF etc. as well as for the scriptwriting contest organized by the CNC.
She is the film expert for the Romanian Film Week organized by ROCADE in Arcachon and Bordeaux (France), and Montreal, Toronto and Quebec (Canada, already the 11th edition).
She had for 6 years, a weekly 60 minutes live program on Radio Total, every Sunday from 12 to 01 P.M, “The Voice of the Movies”, then at the most famous commercial radio station in Romania took the show: Guerrilla, the same day and hour, since November 2008 (70.000 listeners) and now at Radio Gold FM (almost 15 years of Radio program still on). For 5 years already she recommends films in the Morning TV Show: ’Neatza, every Tuesday and Thursday.
She made live commentaries on TV for OSCAR, BAFTA, EMMY, CÉSAR and CANNES Ceremony, 2007 Palme d’Or included, when Romania got it for “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days ” with Cristian Mungiu’s film , she introduced at Plymouth University. She covered the Rendez-vous of UniFrance in 2008, 2014, 2016 and the Lux prize in Strasbourg since 2012. She covered Berlinale and Cannes since 2008as well as Venice, Namur, etc.
She writes on movie issues on a blog of the on-line edition of Adevarul.ro - a national newspaper, Ralix and LiterNet, Romanian Pages (New Zeeland)… She covered the film review for weekly supplement to “Romania Libera”- “Timpul Liber”-, Ciao Magazine (circulation 70.000), and recommended the best movie of the week for Cotidianul. She contributed for Eva and Diverta Magazines, Can-Can (circulation 120.000), Monden etc. and has delivered from 2008 -2018 a lecture about the Romanian Cinema, since its beginning, for the summer school organized for the ex-pats, and future diplomats by the Romanian Cultural Institute. She published a biographical book about her mentor, a famous Romanian film critic: D.I. Suchianu.
She is a member FIPRESCI, and she is the Romanian representative expert in the European Commission for improving the circulation of European Films (OMC).
She is since 2011 the Director and organizer of a Psychoanalysis and Film Festival in Bucharest (imported from London)
Abstract of the talk:
A Century+ of Romanian Cinema
Irina Margareta Nistor
Freelancer, Director and organizer of a Psychoanalysis and Film Festival Bucharest, Romania
Abstract: A short trip through the fascinating history of our film industry and audience’s point of view