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During the Cannes Film Festival at Bucharest I had the chance to meet Berenice , a beautiful Argentinian born French actress. I found her smart, sociable and a pleasurable company during the first two days of the festival. She was launching The Search film at the Festival, accompanied by her husband and film director, Michel Hazanavicius. Cristian Mungiu, Berenice Bejo, Michel Hazanavicius Born in a filmmaker family (Miguel Bejo), she knew from childhood that she wanted to become an actress. Berenice never had a telly in her childhood home as she would always watch movies with her parents (her mum: Silvia Bejo - lawyer) at cinema. She went to castings since she was 14 years old and she  accepted her roles carefully, dedicating time and effort for each character. For example, during her collaboration with Asghar Farhadi  director ( she interpreted Marie Brisson in The Past movie) she spent 4 hours of rehearsal per day with Asghar, one hour of  spor...

I must say that I find myself blessed having this great opportunity to watch the films shown at Cannes Film Festival this year. Cristian Mungiu (the Romanian director who won Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 2007) came with this amazing idea to bring Cannes Film Festival at Bucha rest. And he did it so well all these years as the event is growing year by year. With Berenice Bejo The Opening Gala came with a very good, strong and heavy feature directed by Michel Hazanavicius (the director who won Palme d'Or in 2011): The Search . The action is happening in 1999 during the second War in Chechnya . Four life stories are connected: a 9 years old orphan boy, his sister, a 20 years old Russian soldier and a Human Rights EU representative. Almost as in a documentary, the events are presented accurately, showing the harsh atrocities happened during the Chechnya Second War: the Russian Army and her rough policy, the inhuman killings in Chechnya, the life of the remai...

    Didn’t see too much in Bratislava since I was there during a conference and I spent all day long there. Still, when I have visited the Old Centre, I came to the conclusion that I saw Bratislava once again, back in 2002, during my Christmas journey trip to Vienna.   I reckon that it was so cold and grey around there in that time, perhaps that’s why I forgot that I visited it before.   The Plummer statue reminded me of those old memories. He was still in there, on the paved streets, being admired by the visitors.   The Old Centre is very crowded during the night. There are many beautiful and cosy pubs, traditional Slovakian restaurants, all night clubs. You can go for a coffee with friends at 5 PM, then stop for dinner at 7 PM and start clubbing from 11 PM, then party until the morning (this means 7 o’clock AM). Of course, if you travelled 15 hours the day before and tomorrow morning you have to give your speech at the conference, you would ...

It’s a real adventure to do an animation film. Usually, for a feature it can take up to 3- 4 years, would you believe? There is a lot of work , patience and ambition involved when working to produce an animation film. The art of producing animations is definitely a specific, distinct   cinematographic universe. There are not too many schools/universities   to prepare directors in this specific field, just few in the entire world. For many people, animation procedures remain still a mystery. As far as I understood, there are three types of doing animation: 1.  Using Drawings (the best are the Japanese animations as The wind rises  or Blood -C: The last dark these movies have a perfection in drawing, imitating so well the real nature of the things, amazing work!) 2. Using poppets (the best I could ever see it's Strings (directed by Anders Rønnow Klarlund  ) 3. Using 3-D technologies 4. There are some more ways to do animation,    ...

It’s always good when art  work addresses to specific targets of people. It’s always good when art separates in niches. This strategy will always guarantee the success.   Furniture magazines, or even more -  the kitchen furniture magazines, wine publications, healthy food websites, nude photography blogs and the list can go on.   Producing goods or values for specific categories   of   people   work out so well lately. The same thing is happening in cinematography. We have features and shorts, animation and musicals, coloured and black&white footage, psychological,   history, fiction, documentary movies. Dracula Film Festival it’s a festival that promotes horror and fantasy films.   This year, between 1-5 th of October, in Brasov, Romania, was organized the second edition.   There are three film sections   presented,   and a bonus during the festival : features films, shorts (Romanian and International) and ...