Romania Plans Overhaul of Cinema Industry

09-02-2016

Romania Plans Overhaul of Cinema Industry

By Iulia Blaga

Minister of Culture Vlad Alexandrescu

BUCHAREST: The new minister of Culture Vlad Alexandrescu, helped by his film adviser Andrei Rus, is planning major changes in Romanian cinema starting with the Romanian Film Center, old cinemas and film education in schools.

Alexandrescu openly expressed his intention to reform the CNC. For now the Council of Administration has been partially replaced and moves have been made towards a new CNC regulation. Alexandrescu said that the first session of the grants contest in 2016 will be opened soon and from now on the CNC will respect the law by organizing two sessions per year.

Recently, the Ministry of Culture started recruiting new members for the Administration Council of RADEF RomâniaFilm, the former Communist network which runs only 16 cinemas from the several hundred in operation before 1990.

“This contest for the CA is important towards the readjustment of the situation of hundreds of cinemas which are in bad shape or closed. RomâniaFilm functioned without a CA for years and without a full CA in the last six months. The mission of the new members will be tough. They have to come up with a salvation plan in three months. In the recent years RomâniaFilm was in steep decline, with huge debts, and it lost control over its cinemas which often run without heating, good projectors and audiences,” film critic Andrei Rus, the new cinema adviser to Vlad Alexandrescu, told FNE.

Since 2008, RomâniaFilm has re-assigned more than 100 cinemas to local councils, but less than 10% are still screening films. The Ministry of Culture is willing to provide expertise to the local councils which want to be part of a rehabilitation programme using European funds. There is no plan of building new cinemas in 2016, since the budget of the Ministry of Culture is very small, consisting of only 0.1% of the GDP, Rus told FNE.

The Ministry of Culture also opened a discussion with film professionals to build the first educational film programme in schools ever implemented in Romania. The programme will be implemented together with the Ministry of Education and will have a major focus on spreading Romanian films in schools.

Alexandrescu also plans to help the Film Archives, which is in a difficult situation and has no manager since Anca Mitran took over the CNC in 2014.

Published in Romania