BACKSTAGE

open film seminar — 18.5.2021 11:00

The Hungarian Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology of UBB Cluj and the Tranzit Foundation present this year’s open seminar of the Film and Anthropology course:
BACKSTAGE
Professional secrets of anthropological and documentary film festivals and institutions

16:00 Discussion about Cinema ARTA from Cluj
17:00 Film screening and discussion about the films (in Hungarian)

  • Annex (Melléklet) by Jenő Márton and Gábor Nagy (1981, 17 minutes, experimental documentary in Hungarian with Romanian subtitles)
  • Attila Gödri: Rodion by G.A. (2019, 32 minutes, documentary in Romanian and Hungarian)
    Guests: Csilla Nagy, curator of the Cinema ARTA and Attila Gödri, director, and technical coordinator of the cinema
    Moderator: Henrietta Bocz, student of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work
    Seminar coordinated by Csilla Könczei and Réka Orsolya Csiki

Free event, registration required.
Registration: https://forms.gle/sHd59LKNQ6n8D7QHA

Cinema ARTA
Cinema ARTA from Cluj is the oldest cinema in Romania which still retains its original function. It was opened in 1913, its 108th anniversary is celebrated this year. For more than a whole century, the cinema has lived and changed together with Cluj, experiencing wars, political, social, economic and cultural transformations. The changes were followed by the numerous replacements of the denominations as well. The institution first opened its doors as the cinema of the University (‘Egyetem-mozgó’), then in 1918, when the state boundaries changed, it was renamed as Select. The same thing had been repeated during World War II. Under the Soviet influence, it was renamed as Maxim Gorky Cinema, and a few years later as the Cinema of the Youth. The actual name ARTA (Művész) Cinema was given in 1969.
In the years following the fall of the comunist regime, the number of functioning cinemas had been rapidly declining, but the ARTA cinema has survived. The building of the cinema, which had been expropriated by the communist regime, was returned in 2010 to the descendants of Dávid Sebestyén, the architect and builder of the cinema, who decided to continue to preserve its cultural function. After a renovation, the renewed cinema reopened in 2019, with an enthusiastic young team. Their aim is to promote culture and diversity through the interaction between art and people.

Nagy Csilla graduated from the Faculty of Letters of UBB Cluj, obtaining a degree in Hungarian and Russian language and literature in 2013. She has been distributing films for seven years, being a manager of Cine Europe Agency for five years, and bringing to Romania films such as The Space in Between: Marina Abramović in Brazil, or Janis: Little Girl Blue. Actually she is a curator at ARTA Cinema and a project coordinator as well. She likes to be part of creative and challenging processes, one of them being the independent micro theatre experiment Micro from Budapest.

The director of the film, Attila Gödri, graduated from Sapientia EMTE in 2019 with a master’s degree. He is currently a member of the Cinema ARTA and Tranzit House team, as well, he is a technical assistant at the Filmtettfeszt festival. In 2020 he represented Hungary at the Giornate degli autori (Authors’ Day) of the Venice Film Festival.

Annex / Melléklet (1981)
In the late 70s and early 80s, a group of friends experimented with filmmaking in Cluj with a super 8 camera. The Annex was made in this context by Gábor Nagy, visual artist and Jenő Márton, musician. This experimental film today boasts not only aesthetic but also documentary values, as it represents the city of those times. After many years, it was digitized by the Filmtett team, so in 2019 it could be shown at the Cinema ARTA as a part of the Filmtettfeszt festival. This was the first time to be seen on the big screen by the community of Cluj and Gábor Nagy, one of the directors.

Rodion by G.A. (2019)
Attila Gödri’s documentary film Rodion by G.A. is about Rodion-Ladislau Roșca, the father of the electronic music from Romania. He was born in Cluj in 1953 and was raised by his single mother. He graduated from the Brassai Samuel High School and studied clarinet at Gheorghe Dima Academy of Music. Because he loved to experiment and compose he learned to play several instruments, used DIY technique, and bought a Tesla Sonet Duo tape recorder to record his musical ideas. In 1975 he co-founded Rodion G.A. which, a few years later became a one-man band. Even thouigh Romania was a communist state at the time, Rodion had great success, playing his music on the Romanian Television and composing music for theater, but when his mother died in 1989, he retired for a long time. He was rediscovered in 2012, after which he had a number of performances in Romania and also abroad. He died on March 27, 2021, after a long illness.