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Reviews
Independenta Romaniei (1912)
Silent Appearance of the Romanian Army
This film was projected during the 6th edition of Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) accompanied by music mixed by Dj DuBase. There are a few scenes presenting the life of Romanian peasants dancing their traditional dance, the departure to the army, relief-moments in the army: soldiers playing music to each other, dancing hora, priest blessing the national flag, a large number of shots presenting the war, the meetings of the rulers, a field full of injured soldiers (agonizing repeatedly in a theatrical manner) the last scene: the victory march of the Romanian army. The film has no plot, is a kind of war propaganda film, a sort of extended reconstructed news reel imagery, constructed from a series of tableau-like compositions, long sequences shot mainly in exteriors with static camera, almost every shot is a long shot. The formal characteristics are reminiscent of the Primitive Mode of Representation (Noel Burch's term for the early cinema until 1906). There where though a few tilted camera setups and a large number of scenes beautifully composed in depth - not so common for the period. The different, mostly not interrelated shots were concatenated with inter-titles recounting the (hi)story of the Romanian-Turk war. As the film has no plot, has no characters either, the faces of the characters cannot be seen on closer views. The king, the commander of the army can be recognized thanks to their cloths and center place in the composition.
According to the Festival reviewer this is the first Romanian feature film, and the the extras in the movie are the soldiers of the Romanian Army. The length of the film according to the TIFF-schedule is 82 minutes, but it was only 65 actually, maybe because of the faster projecting speed. And sometimes I noticed that the format wasn't fitting the screen. But nowadays how many cinema's are prepared technically to project silent feature reels?
It was an interesting experience, the music helped bridging the 95 years gap between the making of the film and the audience. There's going to be presented a 2007 fiction film about 'the making of' The War for Independence: Nae Caranfil's: The Rest is Silence.
La antena (2007)
Allegory on Muteness
I've seen this movie twice on Transilvania International Film Festival(TIFF), the movie is in competition and I really hope that Esteban Sapir will get one of the awards (at least the best image award).
As a silent cinema fan I'm interested in contemporary movies that quote or recreate the language of the yester-year cinema. The previous reviewer emphasized the quotes from Fritz Lang and Fr. W. Murnau. As I see it, the movie references directly Lang's Metropolis, and the allegorical-parabolic character of his plots. But I didn't see Murnau in it. There's a more obvious Melies-homage though: the Moon with a (here cigar-smoking) human face, and the paper-made, painted mountains and city-landscapes. I enjoyed the film mostly for its visuals, and in the meantime I found very interesting the story on muteness, and the creative means of communication used by the inhabitants of the voiceless city. From this perspective this movie is an unique reflexion on the muteness of the silent cinema, because in the films of the silent period one can hardly find stories with mute characters. In this case can be questioned whether the story on the stolen voices was the motivation for the silent film form, or there's an intention to play upon the muteness of the silent films. Another example of this kind of reflexion I found in Guy Maddin's Careful,where the inhabitants of a mountain-village have restrictions in using their voices. I intend to write a paper on it, if you know movies related to this topic, please let me know!!!
I highly recommend Esteban Sapir's film to every moviegoer (one of the critics called it: the jewel of the festival).
PS: Winners were announced, and the film won the award for best cinematography!