Apologies to Mac Dunlop.
‘The Widows of the Screen’ first appeared in the November 2001 edition (Vol.29 No. 7) of the French film journal ‘Soie’. It has been translated into English by Munio Alberro. Thanks to Laure Betil, Elise Langelier, Robert Yewgate and Searlait Breaux
The Widows of the Screen
By Searlait Breaux
The Bucharest Autumn Film Festival has been an irregular fixture on the Romanian cultural calendar since 1991. Having run for the last decade on an uneven schedule, it has now settled down as a biannual event, held in October, and twinned with a similar festival that takes place in the Bulgarian capital of Sophia on alternate years. This year has seen an increase in size, with a crop of 53 films spread across five venues. These include the recently refurbished Worker’s Cinema, whose re-opening coincides with the first day of the festival.
This reorganisation has gone hand in hand with a huge improvement in the overall management of the event. Holes in the transportation network that led to films playing to half empty theatres, in previous years, have been temporarily plugged by special buses, brought in from Germany, specifically to ferry attendees between the various presentations, parties and debates. Outside sponsorship has raised the international profile of the event and the current vogue for directors to choose small and exclusive settings as a platform for showing off their latest works means that the festival has netted a number of world premiers.
Among the films to be screened during the six day event is Infim Mare by Costica Pavlenco. It is the third non-French film to have been partially funded by the Paris-based French Guild of Popular Cinema whose goal is to make intelligent, highbrow films that can be enjoyed by the general public.
“Hollywood does not deserve its audience,” says Andre Vachon, Chairman of the Guild, when I meet him a few weeks before the festival. Later, he petitions me to stand in the foyer after the film and gauge the reactions of the audience, and, the day before I am due to fly out to Romania, he personally presents me with a bundle of questionnaires to be handed out to people as they leave the theatre.
Infim Mare premiers at The Angel cinema midway through the festival. At the same time, on the other side of town In the Footsteps of the London Poets a silent movie from the UK, proves to be the bigger draw, pulling in most of the crowds and media attention.
My partner for the evening is the Romanian cinema critic and retired director, Daniel Bojin, who speaks in slow, measured sentences and, it turns out, is also officially the tallest man in Romania. I feel sorry for the people who find themselves sitting behind him.
“I think that you will enjoy Costica’s work. He has an artist’s eye for detail,” he tells me, after we have squeezed past the rows of seated spectators and he has managed to somehow fold himself into one the green velvet upholstered seats.
The Angel cinema is located, in the centre of an immense, otherwise barren patch of waste ground on the outskirts of Bucharest. It is known colloquially to natives of the city as ‘The Brick’ because of its rectangular shape and the absence of windows. During the civil war, soldiers on both sides took refuge inside the theatre and the bullet riddled exterior is in the process of being sculpted into an artistic frieze.
The brutal modernism of the building and its hard, predictable angles is at odds with the sumptuous interior décor, which consists of graceful curves and archways that seem to flow into each other. In the main auditorium, a pair of enormous gilded wings join either side of the screen, stretching back along the walls. They are so prominent that I worry that they will be a distraction during the film, however, as the great halo of lights above us dims and the architecture of the cinema melts in the background, I instead find myself preoccupied by a ragged procession of gypsy women and children who shuffle noisily down the central aisle and take up station in the vacant row of front seats that I have assumed are for visiting dignitaries.
Around me the audience becomes restless and I notice several people picking their bags up off the floor and storing them on their laps. Next to me, Daniel expels what could be interpreted as a faint snort of disapproval. He leans over and whispers in my ear:
“These are the wives and children of the actors who have chosen the life of the Performance. It is an extreme form of method acting pioneered by Lambrecht Ranis. The men forsake their families and resolve to live only as the characters they play in films. The only time these women will see their husbands and the children will see their fathers is on the screen at the cinema.”
As the women settle noisily along the front, shepherding the children into seats only for them to switch places as soon as their mother’s backs are turned, Daniel leans over again:
“The theatre must let them in, but they make trouble. When the film starts there will be two ushers who will stand at either end of the row to make sure that the women do not talk and the children do not run around or play games.”
“Are there Performance actors starring in this film?” I ask, racking my brains, trying to recall if I have seen the three male leads in any other films.
“Not the lead actors. The men who choose the Performance devote themselves to playing only minor roles. Many of their parts do not even have lines. Their aim is to breathe life into the background scenery. They believe that the small roles are of equal importance to the parts played by the lead actors.”
Infim Mare is the allegorical story of a Romanian town that finds itself suddenly divided by a great flood, and the social tensions that arise when the waters subside and the divided settlement is reunited.
Several times, during the film, Daniel taps me on the arm and points out particular individuals on the screen, usually lurking somewhere in the background.
“That is Cezar Bratiano.” he says, indicating an intense man in his thirties with wavy, chestnut coloured hair.
“He is considered the greatest of the Performance actors. He has great control over his screen presence – he can burn himself into a picture or it can be so he is hardly there at all. Next to him is Doru Tere. I think that is Marius Gilca. The two men by the corner table are Razvan and Iulian Istok.”
“Are they brothers?”
“They are cousins, I think”
It seems that many of the minor roles in Infim Mare are played by Performance actors. The café owner / barber is Geza Moldovan. The fisherman, who comes third in the angling contest, is Abel Floca. Then there is Ciodara Istok, Sorin Amanar, Victor Leonte, David Stan and others, whom Daniel points out to me, but which neither of us can remember after the film.
The festival ends a few days later, with an evening of recent Hollywood blockbusters. Earlier in the afternoon, an award to the best film, screened at the event goes to Würdevoll – the true story of a ballet that was performed simultaneously on both sides of the Berlin wall.
I resolve to spend my final two days in Bucharest meeting some of the men who have chosen to live the hard life of the Performance. Enquiries among the festival goers and film makers turns up very little. It seems that few of those directly involved in making movies will talk openly about these men.
Marius Dimir, a young film student, who is working as an extra on a German movie, retelling the story of Dracula, informs me that the performers are badly paid and gain most of their income through other means.
“They often cause trouble on movie sets,” says his friend Mihai. “They are like the Mafia. They can stop the filming if they are not paid in advance, then they do not arrive on the set when they are supposed to or different actors come in their place.”
Lucian Ilionescu, the owner of the Bright Star restaurant in Bucharest, where Performance actors are sometimes spotted, offers to arrange an audience with some of the men. An interview, he tells me, will not be possible:
“You may drink with them, but they will not talk about their work with you.”
While I am waiting for Lucian to organise the meeting, I encounter Stefan Arcos, an ISP Network Manager, who also runs the website – Performance, documenting the appearances of established Performance actors in the movies and registering new faces. Since setting up the site last year Performance has received over a half a million hits. On his days off, Stefan makes frequent visits to the sets of movies, filming in the Eastern block. He admits that keeping track of the Performers is not easy:
“We do not learn of their deaths. Sometimes their real death is mirrored by a death on the screen. Many of them change their names when they enter the profession and they are buried under the name of their final role, so it is difficult to learn much of their family history or their circumstances before they became actors. They do not communicate with the media and so I must talk to the directors and maybe approach some of the cast and ask them: “Who is this man?””
In spite of their off-camera shyness, the cult of the Performance has not gone unnoticed or unreported in the press. Moscow-based Jazz Magazine – a Russian periodical aimed at teenage girls, frequently runs articles on the Performers and every month receives a respectable quantity of fan mail mostly intended for Cezar Bratiano and the other younger actors.
“The men who study the Performance are often more popular among teenage girls than the male leads. They are seen as dangerous and mysterious,” says Editor, Dina Kotenkov.
“It is difficult to get pictures of them. The paparazzi will sometimes follow them when they leave the set of a film, but last year a photographer was murdered. Before he was killed, he had his eyes sliced-out and so now there is a reluctance to do this kind of work”
Among ordinary, less star-struck Romanians the reaction towards the Performers is lukewarm.
“They are thieves and rapists,” says Ivan Nistor. “Many of them are wanted by the police for murder. The film makers have to bribe the police not to take them away during filming! When they do not have roles, they live like outlaws in the woods.”
On the same day I meet with Horatiu Chisca, a captain in the local Police, who has recently liased with an Interpol taskforce investigating enforced prostitution and slavery. He believes the Performance is occasionally used as a cover for something more sinister:
“The performance method of acting has been romanticised. There are a few genuine individuals who choose to work in this way but the rest are gypsies. In many instances, they continue to have contact with their families and they use their influence to support their criminal activities. The women are involved in prostitution and fencing and they assist in the cross-border trade in young girls and children.
“These men play outlaws in films but in real life they are also outlaws. It is no different than if a criminal in the west appeared in a film as bank robber.”
A few hours before I am due to fly back to Paris, I return to the Bright Star restaurant where I ate breakfast.
“Two of the men were here this morning but they did not want to talk with you,” Lucian tells me when he brings over my soup. “They have gone back into the forest now.”
William Shakespeare wrote: “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. Those who work in the acting profession will briefly play different roles from the ones which they were born into. The question for the few who choose the life of the Performance is where the acting ends and the reality begins.
