When you go inside the theatre it’s still day and when you get out it’s night
Sunday, the 3rd of March, from 16:00 we meet at the OWR Cineclub for a last training session before the 12 th edition of the One World Romania Festival (15 th -24 th of March).
And indeed, it is a training session, for we have prepared a very special film, almost 5 hours long, not that frequently seen in the usual cinema theatres. We are talking about one of the last documentaries Jonas Mekas made, “Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR”, released in 2008. Through this last Cineclub screening before the beginning of the festival, we would like to pay homage to an artist we sadly lost at the beginning of the year. The film will be screen in its original version (English), without Romanian subtitles.
“Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR” is one of a kind. Composed of news fragments and interviews Mekas filmed in his living room, on his own TV, for almost two years – it documents the way American mass media has shown the hard process of separation from URSS undergone by Lithuania at the beginning of the 1990s.
Another such long film – of more than eight hours – is “Dead Souls” – the most recent documentary of Chinese director Wang Bing, which will also be the first documentary to be screened in the 12 th edition of OWR, on its first day, Friday, the 15 th of March, starting from 12:00 at Apollo111. This is one of the many events of the opening day, as we’ll be announcing the full program on Thursday, the 28 th of February.
The current edition of the festival bears in mind our belief that, now more than ever in the past years, we should pause to think. Nowadays, to take eight hours to watch a demanding and revelatory film at the cinema is almost an act of rebellion. It is an act of rebellion to take a step outside the ideological circle – almost swallowing you up everyday – and to allow yourself to question and to filter things from other perspectives.
Therefore, we present you, perhaps more than before, films that question the origins of various problems decisively shaping the world today. And therefore, more than we did before, we are showing films of various lengths, some demanding almost an entire day to be watched.
In his “Dead Souls”, Wang Bing confronts once again the painful wounds caused by the Chinese dictatorship and the crimes against humanity it engendered. This time, the film revolves around the paranoia that took hold of Mao Zedong in the 1950s and the circumstances in which he accused different people (predominantly young people and teachers, the so called “intellectuals”) of being “right-winged”. Similarly to Romania, where Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was sending countless souls to the “Canal”, these people were imprisoned in re-education centres which turned out to be their death sentences.
Aside from the invaluable testimonies of the survivors, what stands out is the manner in which the film was made and edited: it keeps us alert. From the first to the last shot of its 8 and a half hours, this structure guides us along a sensitive route, which will enable us to live through their stories with them. We are no longer simple spectators.
The editing gives us the ability to see the invisible, to merge with these souls, to feel for ourselves all the dimensions and layers of this tragedy.
The Wang Bing documentary will be indeed keeping you in front of the projection screen for half a day, but we guarantee that you will not be regretting a single minute and that it will be a unique experience. After “Dead Souls” we invite you to stay with us for a discussion with film critic Andrei Gorzo.
The tickets for “Dead Souls” are already on sale on Eventbook, and are priced at 25 RON, and 15 RON for students and pensioners. Access to the screening can also be made based on general passes or 5 entrance passes.
The entrance for the Cineclub is made based on a list of reservations. To get registered on the list, please send an e-mail to info@oneworld.ro, containing your name, the number of seats you would like to reserve and the date and time for the event you would like to attend. For the events on the 3rd of March we will be taking reservations until Saturday, the 2nd of March 2019, hour 17:00.
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The OWR Cineclub is organized by the One World Romania Association, in collaboration with Goethe Insitut Bucharest and the Hungarian Institutie Balassi, and is co-financed by AFCN.
The project does not necessarily represent the position of AFCN. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or for how its results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the recipient of the financing.
