Abstract

The objective of my work is to shed light on the way in which the post-1953 ideology of the Romanian Communist Party influenced Romanian theatre and film director Lucian Pintilie’s career, resulting in a ban to work in Romania. Reacting to the imposition of the cultural revolution and against the laws of coagulating the socialist realist work of art, Lucian Pintilie managed to mark the Romanian theatrical and cinema landscape through the artistic quality of the productions and the directed films, replicated by the renown of the imposed interdiction.

Highlights

  • The objective of my work is to shed light on the way in which the post-1953 ideology of the Romanian Communist Party influenced Romanian theatre and film director Lucian Pintilie’s career, resulting in a ban to work in Romania

  • The consequences of the censorship in the communist times reach the contemporary period, stricto sensu, Lucian Pintilie was affected by censorship from 1962 to 1981, years marking the banning of the staging of the dramatic text The Fools under the Moonlight and of the film Carnival Scenes

  • Within the political context of their manifestation, the effects of censorship in the works of theatre and cinema directed by Lucian Pintilie range from mild to severe

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Summary

General Presentation

Ceauşescu’s Romania was a closed society, characterised by repression in all fields of human existence: limitations of ownerships rights, hard labour conditions and small wages, lacking freedom of movement, bureaucratic obstacles against emigration, violations of the rights of national minorities, contempt for religious faiths and the persecution of religious practices, drastic economic austerity, constant censorship in the field of culture, the repression of all dissident views and an omnipresent cult around the president and his family, which contributed to the demoralisation of the population. The ban to work in Romania determines him to expatriate in 1973 He continued abroad the series of theatre performances staged on some of the world’s most important stages: Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris: Turandot (1974); Théâtre de la Ville in Paris: The. Seagull (1975), The Fire Raisers (1976), Jack, or The Submission and The Future is in Eggs (1977), The Last Ones (1978), Three Sisters (1979), The Wild Duck (1981), The Lower Depths (1983), Arden of Faversham (1984), Tonight We Improvise (1987), The Dance of Death (1990); Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis: The Seagull (1983), Tartuffe (1984), The Wild Duck (1988); Arena Stage in Washington: Tartuffe (1985), The Wild Duck (1986), The Cherry Orchard (1988). ‘Lucian Pintilie will never work in the ideological-artistic field again’ predicted a ‘more rigid’ bigwig with predestined name—Topor (axe).” (Pintilie, 2003) The case from 1963, when the staging of the play The Fools under the Moonlight at Bulandra Theatre was halted, brings with it the first reference to the political context that the director describes as a point of entry “in a hypocritical liberal period” (Pintilie, 2003)

Socialist Realism versus Bourgeois Mentalities
The Apparatus of Censorship
From the History of Censored Works
Jerusalem
A Representative Case
The Central Historical National Archives
Other Documents Regarding the “Bulandra” Case
Conclusion

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