In a letter addressing the new Romanian Minister of Culture, Vlad Alexandrescu, Mungiu says that the last art house cinemas in Bucharest with more than 350 seats have been closed due to the recent law prohibiting public activities in buildings with earthquake risk, and calls on the government to make building new art house cinemas a priority.
The four main cinemas in Bucharest - Studio, Cinema Patria, Scala and Cinema Pro closed when a law was approved on 17 November 2015 after a fire that broke in the Colectiv club in Bucharest on 30 October 2015 killed 60 young people and injured more than 150. The tragedy led to public protests against corruption and the resignation of the Government.
“In the last 15 years, Romanian cinema has received the biggest awards possible at the most important film festivals, generating a tremendous amount of positive remarks about Romania. (…) What should we do next in order to be a priority for you?”, Mungiu says.
There used to be more than 600 cinemas before 1990 but “due to tragic management and dubious privatisations, the whole network has been destroyed little by little in the last 25 years”, Mungiu says.
Of the 600 cinemas operating before 1990, approximately 30 are still in use and the heir of the old network, RADEF RomaniaFilm, which is subordinated to the Ministry of Culture but does not receive any public funding, has a public and a private debt totaling more than 6.7 m EUR / 30 m RON, according to the leader of RADEF Romania Film Union, Maria Bikfalvi.
According to Mungiu the lack of a national strategy is endangering the distribution of independent films and also film festivals. “We (as a group of filmmakers), elaborated a strategy more than ten years ago. We gave it to all your predecessors with no results so far. There was never the political will to make it happen. (…) There were always other priorities”, Mungiu says in his letter.
Minister Alexandrescu has said that one of his priorities is to consolidate the heritage buildings affected by the earthquake law, but also that he needs the support of the local administration.
Recently, Romanian Filmmakers Union (UCIN), which has operated and restored the Studio cinema, said in a press release that the cinema is managed by the National Film Centre, but Anca Mitran, the general director of the CNC told FNE that the Studio cinema has been rented by the CNC to UCIN for 20 years until 2017.
"The Romanian National Archives run two cinema halls. We are welcoming there the festivals cancelled in the closed cinemas", Mitran told FNE.
