Asta e

Last Friday, Adina came over to my apartment and we went together to the geriatric hospital to see the church her friend the priest built. It was only a five-minute walk from my apartment. Unfortunately, the priest wasn't there, so we took a short stroll around the grounds. The hospital is named after Ana Aslan, a famous Romanian gerontologist who developed an anti-aging drug called Gerovital (also called GH3, or procaine). Supposedly, Gerovital can slow down the aging process and is injected or administered orally to patients with various illnesses or to others who are simply looking for the fountain of youth. I found some Gerovital face cream at the pharmacy for about $3, and despite liberal applications I seem to be looking older every day. Maybe I need to shoot it up instead.

The Ana Aslan hospital is "fara plata," (without pay) meaning it offers "free" state health care. It also offers some services for pay, such as Gerovital treatment. But Adina was quick to note that there is no real free health care in Romania; you always have to slip the doctor a "spaga" (bribe) if you actually want to be treated. The more you slip into his pocket, the more attentive he will be. So it's basically a lot like the American model of health care, only the Romanian system cuts out the middleman. Since the hospital is only for treatment and not a long-term care facility, I asked Adina what happens to an elderly person with no family who is sick or unable to care for themselves. Where do they go? "They die!" Adina said, followed by that quintessentially Romanian expression of fatalism, "Asta e." (That's how it is.) Adina is the full-time caretaker for her elderly husband, who is in the late stages of Parkinson's disease. She told me that through her friendship with the priest who built the church on the hospital grounds, she was able to get her husband into the hospital for a full battery of tests and stay with him in the hospital for two weeks. The priest used his influence to make sure they got proper care, and Adina slipped an extra $30 into the doctor's pocket just for good measure. "I always feel embarrassed doing that," Adina said. "But the doctors don't!"

The church is right next to the hospital, and it's a pleasant little place. It was built by the priest and his family and painted in the traditional Romanian Orthodox style, with colorful icons framed in gold. People from the community donated rugs from their own homes that cover the floor in a patchwork. Adina is not a believer, so I asked her why this church was so important to her. "I think Christian morality is a beautiful thing," she said. "I think that it encourages people to be good. I don't believe in God, but I believe in teachings that make people be kinder to one another." I wanted to say, Too bad that religion is also used as a justification for committing atrocities, but my Romanian wasn't up to the task--which was probably for the best. Adina lived through decades of communism, and she sees the survival of Romanian religious traditions as a sign of her country's strength and resistance to oppression. Her father, an intellectual, was imprisoned and forced into ten years of hard manual labor building a canal, and died a year after his release. For Adina, this small church is a symbol of love and kindness; a place of refuge and calm. Spiritual Gerovital.

Cinque Terre

One summer, when I was living in Philadelphia, my roommate Kate went to Italy and sent back a postcard from Cinque Terre, a stretch of coast in the northern Italian region of Liguria. She wrote that it was the most beautiful place she'd ever seen. I tucked the destination away in the back of my mind, and recently came across it again when I was contemplating taking a short trip away from Bucharest. After six months in a loud, grimy city, I deeply needed to be surrounded by calm and beauty. I found a cheap ticket to Rome, plotted out a solo trek, and packed my hiking boots.

Cinque Terre actually lived up to all the guidebook hyperbole. After one night in an overpriced hotel in La Spezia, I made my way to Ostello 5 Terre, a very well-run and pleasant hostel in Manarola. The first morning was overcast, but the sky held and I hiked from Manarola to Vernazza, where I had some gelato and explored the town before taking the train back to Riomaggiore and walking from there back to Manarola. I wandered down to the beach in Corniglia, and sat on the smooth pebbles watching the water splash heavily against the rocks. All that power. I took in the smell of the earth and the wildflowers and watched caterpillars crawl end-to-end in a long line into a hole in the ground. I encountered lizards runing through the ruins of an old monastery, and petted the friendly stray cats that seemingly wait for you at picturesque checkpoints in the villages. Each part of the walk was beautiful in a different way. I treated myself to a nice dinner out. As I sat there in the trattoria, surrounded by couples, I realized that this was my first time traveling alone to a country where I didn't have friends to stay with. I allowed myself to feel the loneliness of it...So much beauty and no one to share it with. And then I went back to the hostel, borrowed a book from the library, and curled up in my bed to read.

The next day I took the train to Monterrosso. The weather was glorious; so much so that it was impossible to be lonely. Cinque Terre is spectacular on an overcast day, but when the sun comes out all the colors sparkle. I intended to eat breakfast in Monterosso--I was envisioning the perfect outdoor cafe--but the tranquility was marred by a construction site. I decided to embrace the fact that I could go anywhere I wanted and do anything I wanted for the whole day, without having to negotiate with anyone. It was a liberating thought. I let my body decide where to go, and it felt like heading up into the hills. I walked, up, up, up for a long time, on stone stairs that led at last to a panoramic overlook. I was having trouble deciphering the trail guide, but decided that I'd eventually end up somewhere. Somewhere turned out to be Levanto, a couple of hours later, where I had pizza and more gelato before taking the train back to Monterrosso, then hiking from Monterrosso to Vernazza. I had heard that this stretch of trail was the most difficult and least scenic, but while it was the hardest I also found it to be the most beautiful. Isn't that often how it goes?

Progress for international adoptions?

Things may be starting to change with regard to the ban on international adoptions in Romania. Several key European Parliament members have voiced their disagreement with this policy. A reporter for Romania's English-language daily, the Bucharest Daily News, has been following the story. If you're interested, check out this recent article:

http://www.daily-news.ro/article_detail.php?idarticle=23672

(I still haven't figured out how to insert a hyperlink, sorry.)

February Shoot

In late February, I decided the world began to thaw enough for a production trip to Beclean. I had arranged for a talented Romanian cinematographer, Nora, to go with us to help shoot and translate. But at the last minute, Nora had a minor car accident in Bucharest, which in Romania means spending hours and hours sitting at the police station dealing with insurance and claims. She was sure to miss the night train, which meant that it would be just Nikki and myself. We debated about whether or not to reschedule, but since we were packed and ready we decided to strap the gazillion pieces of luggage and equipment onto our bodies and go for it. The next challenge was finding a taxi driver willing to drive us to the Gara de Nord (train station), because it's such a short distance that they don't want to lose their place in the queue. We finally found a nice guy who even got out of his seat to open his trunk for the luggage.

Night trains in Romania are a delight, especially in winter. Because of the amount of equipment we had, we weren't really candidates for a couchette with four other strangers stacked in it. We opted instead for a first-class compartment, which is a deal that can work if you get a sympathetic female agent in the train travel agency. These nice women understand your plight as a female carrying lots of expensive stuff, and will reserve and hold the other four seats in the compartment so you won't have to share space with the vodka-swigging, chain-smoking workers that like to party it up on the night trains. It's good to be in a compartment without strangers, because it means that you have the freedom to open the window to let out a little bit of the furnace-like heat that emanates from behind the seats. A water bottle wedged in the train window brings the compartment down to a manageable temperature, allowing us to get a few hours of sleep.

Every time I arrive in Beclean at 6:30AM, I start to feel really sorry for myself. I'm not a morning person, to begin with. Add to this poor sleep, lack of breakfast options, a dangerously icy walkway, and a hundred extra pounds strapped to my body, and I think, Oh, woe is me. Where is Sorinescu to help me? Why didn't the Fulbright buy me a car too? And why is Nicolescu so darned happy this early in the morning? Our first stop on this cold, foggy Sunday morning was the first cafe in sight, which was already populated with very quiet men in furry hats having tuica (a strong plum brandy) and beer for breakfast. We had a hot chocolate and some cookies and wondered if the men's wives minded that their husbands were here and not home snuggling with them in bed.

The children were just waking up when we arrived at the school, and as usual we were greeted with great enthusiasm. Every time I go, I bring with me a great new combination of exotic foreigners. This time, the kids wanted to know, "Where is that guy?" (Sorinescu) and "Who is she?" Nikki was especially fun because she didn't speak more than a little Romanian. This put me in the absurd position of translating for Nikki as well as attempting to speak for myself. Fortunately, a few of my child film subjects, who've known me since the first camp in 2001, have become expert at translating my bad Romanian into better Romanian. So they'll hang around me, and when a small kid asks something, I'll answer as best I can. The small child usually looks confused. Then Adelina or Mihaela will repeat my answer--exactly what I meant to say-- in better Romanian. They are especially helpful when I get asked the same question again and again (like how long I'll be in Romania) because then Adelina or Mihaela will simply answer for me, sparing me the agonizing repeat. Even when my Romanian is correct, Mihaela still translates for me like a true professioal. The small kids' eyes dart back and forth between me and Mihaela, impressed that she is bilingual. There are a couple of children who know a few words of English, and the exchange usually goes like this:

Andre: Hello!
Amy: Hello!
Andre: Shit damn! (Hysterical laughter)
Amy: Andre, that's not very nice!
Andre: Fuck! (Group giggling).
Amy: That's not very nice either. Who taught you to say that?
Andre: Thank you very much.

Anyway, we decided to spend the first day in the school just observing, much to the disappointment of the children, who think we should be filming them at all times. But I really wanted to spend some time just taking in the school environment without the camera. Nicolescu's observations, as someone who has worked in schools and child care settings, were interesting. Notably, she wondered where on earth the adults were. There seemed to be no supervision for long stretches of time. She asked one child where the teachers were, and she said, "They're out smoking!" The school is actually pleasant, as schools go. As schools for disabled children in Romania go, it's great. But it is chaotic. It was more chaotic than usual because there were several special events happening, including a visit from a local radio station involving gift bags for each child. We were lucky (or unlucky) to arrive the same time as the radio guys, because then the kids all though we were the ones who'd brought the treats.

As part of my brilliant plan--called Total Immersion Documentary Filmmaking--Nikki and I booked a room in the girls' dorm for the next two nights. The director of the school asked the building manager to change the lock on the door so that our stuff would be safe, which was very kind. The Beclean Special School Bed and Breakfast is a spartan affair. The sheets are a bit threadbare and the mosquitos (yes, in winter--I have no idea) are bothersome. The walls are covered with little brown blood splats and dried mosquito parts. But we found the top bunks to be quite comfortable after our long train trip and awoke the next morning to watch the girls wake up, get dressed, and go down to breakfast. The appearance of the camera got everyone riled up, so after breakfast we hid in our room for a few minutes for a breather. The door handle must have been tried every five seconds by another little hand, and we heard voices saying, "Where are the Americans? Are the Americans in town? Are the Americans awake?" No knocking, just kids trying the handle of the door, one after the other, impatient to get their hands on us. And get their hands on us they do, when we finally emerge from our chambers.

I didn't shoot a lot this time around, but I got a little bit of good stuff, and I felt I better understood the rhythm of the school by the time we left. More importantly, I think it improved my relationship with the staff, director, and children to be the one speaking directly to them--however laboriously--rather than hiding behind a translator. I really need to study my Romanian so that I don't have to rely as heavily on others. And by the end of our third day at the school, the novelty had worn off enough so that we could actually shoot without all hell breaking loose. Small steps!

Nicolescu

Thank goodness for Nikki. REALLY. To be honest, I was a little bit worried when she told me she wanted to stay with me for almost the entire second half of my grant period here in Romania. It's one thing to work and share a small apartment with one's boyfriend, it's another to do so with your Best Friend from Second Grade, whom you haven't spent any significant amount of time with since you went trick-or-treating as household appliances in 1979. Nikki and I were Very Best Friends for two years in elementary school. We met when we discovered a mutual talent for flaring our nostrils and bonded over the successive weeks and months by being inappropriately disruptive in Mr. Heron's class. We both agree that these were our most creative, happy and well-adjusted years. There were the experimental dress codes (Nikki would deliberately wear two different shoes, or wear them on the wrong feet; I was fond of alternative hairstyles), the play we wrote and performed for the entire school about cavity prevention, and the outfits made entirely out of paper and staples we crafted in our gifted classes while we were supposed to be doing actual work. We were so obnoxious that the administration made sure to separate us after second grade, so we only saw each other at recess, when we would do back flips and aerials and cartwheels in the grass.

Being weird and good at spelling bees and capable of doing playground gymnastics actually catapulted us to semi-stardom in elementary school, but middle school was a different story altogether. No longer was it cool to touch tongues in public just to gross the other kids out. The multiple ponytails had to be replaced by Aquanet-lacquered flybacks, an unfortunate 80's hairstyle that worked well only on Farrah Fawcett. The humid Florida weather made my flybacks sag like little sticky broken wings. Nikki had swimmer's hair that was a gossamer-like yellow-green. Halfway through sixth grade she wound up transferring to a private school, where she became snobby and popular (at least I thought so) and started wearing lots of makeup. That was pretty much the end of it, until our parents ran into one another about twenty years later and thought we should get back in touch. We were both resistant, thinking that we wouldn't know what to say to each other. But the meeting was strangely natural. Nikki had been in Los Angeles doing theater and acting for 12 years, whereas I was in the process of applying to graduate school in film. We were both interested in social issues and working with kids, and were both disappointed that the bold creativity of our early years had been forced underground by the pressure to conform. We both longed for our youthful confidence and spontaneity.

Nicolescu has navigated Bucharest and my frequent complaining with great aplomb. The day she got here she looked out the window of my ninth floor apartment overlooking the city and said, "Aw. I feel sorry for all the poor little Bucharestians." I said, "Why?" and she said "Because they have to live in these big blocky buildings with no trees." It is kind of a jungle out there. Less intrepid individuals would not be so comfortable exploring and accepting it the way Nikki has. She and I can laugh about things the way we used to when we were making paper suits. This is an inestimably valuable thing when one is attempting to sleep in a mosquito-filled dorm room in a Romanian orphanage after a meal of spam and oily soup, with excited children knocking on the door every two seconds in hopes of getting a glimpse of you in all your fascinating foreign splendor.

Why Can't You Film the Beautiful Things?

This is the constant refrain. With our backpacks, running shoes, and expensive camera equipment, my crew members and I don’t really look like locals. Romanians want to know where you’re from and what you’re filming. They’ll look at where your camera is pointed and then back to you. What images are being recorded for the outside world to see? These are important issues for a country of only 22 million people, who don’t get a lot of press. And as we all know, the press is usually interested in reporting on the most sensational and exciting and awful things, so a little press for a country like Romania usually means bad press: orphanages, children with AIDS, corruption, human trafficking. The image of Romania is a national obsession and one that makes me—as a filmmaker—either a friend or a foe.

Romania—if I may be allowed to generalize for a moment--is a proud and insecure nation. Many Romanians love their country with a passion, though many of those who love it also want desperately to leave it so that they can earn more money elsewhere. They love it with the defensive love one has for underdog home teams and imperfect family members: only we are allowed to criticize what is ours—and if someone else dares to do we want to kick them in the teeth. Coming from a “superpower” country (albeit not likely not to remain so for much longer) I don’t usually feel the same instinctive need to defend the U.S.--unless I'm in France.

So the Romanians, both those who have left and those who have stayed, are not reserved in expressing either their approbation or disapproval of the direction in which I choose to point my lens. Just yesterday, I went to Adina’s house for the first time in several months. Adina is 78. She has been very concerned about my poor choice of film subjects. The first thing she said to me was, “Amy, I hope you have found something else to make a film about. You’re not still doing it about those children, are you?” I told her that yes, I was, and she made a sour lemon face. “Why, Amy? Why do you have to do a negative film about Romania? There are too many of those. I told you about my friend, the man who built a church at the Geriatric Hospital. Now that’s a good story. A positive story.” She was genuinely distressed. For the week I stayed with her when I first arrived in Romania, she was busy brainstorming about better, more “positive” films I could make. Most of them had to do with architecture; specifically churches and monasteries.

“Adina, my story isn’t all negative,” I said. “Some of the kids are doing really well.” Adina rolled her eyes. She was not buying it. “Well, I’m sure I could get my friend to help us with the film of the church,” she said. I told her that that might make a fine short film—if I could film her telling me how important it was to make a positive film about Romania, and then follow her to a meeting with this man she so admires. I want to find out why she is so passionate about this little church. So that’s my mini-film project for next week.

More on the Hallmark Channel

You might think (especially if you've been to film school) that most made-for-TV movies are nothing but shoddy melodramas with has-been actors and clunky plotlines. I thought that before I lived here, I really did. But then I moved into a Socialist-era high-rise apartment on a busy Bucharest street, and started making a documentary about abandoned children with disabilities, and then it got cold and rainy and gray outside. The Romanian language is full of irregular verb conjugations and unlikely words of Slavic origin and declensions that make your head spin. Bills must be paid in person in public spaces where the concept of forming a line and waiting your turn has not entirely caught on yet. Romania's not a third-world country by any stretch; in fact my life is materially quite comfortable. But there are no quiet, cozy cafes with non-smoking areas, no Borders bookstores, no trashy People magazines in the supermarket checkout aisle, no good friends to visit on a rainy day. And it's expensive to just pick up the phone and call my mom. With the absence of these little comforts, so central to my lifestyle in the U.S., I felt a little ache of homesickness. Until I discovered channel 13.

From the dusty vaults where bad films go to die, Hallmark has rescued and resuscitated Brittany Murphy's tour de force performance as a patchy-haired Jewish concentration camp inmate, Marlee Matlin's traumatic campus rape, and Judd Nelson's affable radio personality who turns out to have a violent side. Sitcoms that barely saw the light of day in the U.S. get primetime slots in Romania. On a day when I've struggled to understand the words and the culture around me, it's good to come home, fix a little plate of mamaliguta cu branza si smantana, and sit down in front of the TV for a good helping of recycled Americana. With its safe, predictable three-act structures and stilted dialogue, the Hallmark Channel reminds me of home.

Midterm Report Part 3: Grant Progress

Much of my ambivalence about my grant, and the decision to take it, had to do with my proposed film subject. In order to get the grant I have, you have to have letters of support from the host country. In order to get the letters, you have to know people in the country. The people I knew, and the subjects I knew the most about given my previous experience in Romania, were related to child welfare. So I went with what I already knew, despite not being sure that the documentary I was proposing would actually work. Sometimes the theoretical idea does not match up with the reality; sometimes the film idea you have in your head is not logistically possible. So in coming here without doing preproduction first, I was taking a pretty big chance. Experienced documentary film producers might call it foolish; more adventurous philosophical types might call it a wonderful chance to experience the delicious uncertainty of the universe.

The problem is that I fall somewhere in the middle of these two perspectives. At heart I think I'm an adventurous philosophical type (though certain people might just say I'm chronically disorganized. :) But I also know too much about the challenges of filmmaking to really enjoy experiencing the delicious uncertainty of the universe without a damn good plan to record it on tape. All good film producers know that without a solid strategic plan for production and distribution somewhere along the way—and the earlier the better—films usually don’t get finished and funded and seen. But in a world as unpredictable as filmmaking, there are always those exceptions--if the Film Gods are on your side.

My proposed film, I have to admit, is not the most thematically original. I proposed to follow up on five children that I had met while working in a school for children with disabilities in Beclean, Romania--a small town in northern Transylvania. Since I'd last seen them four years ago, all but one of these children had been placed in a family. I thought it could be interesting to see how the children had changed since moving from an institutional setting to a family setting. This is all part of a nationwide movement in Romania to improve its notorious child welfare system, a movement that has been rapidly accelerating in view of Romania's projected 2007 accession to the European Union. New policies are being put in place, with the help of international NGO's, to close or renovate the large traditional institutions (orphanages) and place children in smaller, family settings. Additionally, a moratorium was placed on international adoptions in Romania due to widespread corruption, which was then followed by a total ban due to violation of the moratorium. The Romanian government felt that the only way it could eliminate corruption in a policy area so critical for EU membership was to stop international adoptions altogether.

The new child welfare laws stipulate that children in the system be placed in the least restrictive environment, and one that is as close to a family setting as possible. In order of priority, that means: 1) With the child’s own biological parent(s), 2) Extended family members; 3) adoption within Romania by non-biological parents, 4) a foster family, and 5) a group home or residential living environment. This all sounds good, and there are success stories and very visible improvements. But my firsthand experience (which is restricted to one region) of how it’s all working is that things are a lot more complicated than that. When are they not?

The challenge for me has been to find, in this complex tangle of politics, policy, and the individual lives of the children I know, a thematic and narrative throughline. Add to this the challenges of making a film in a foreign country with almost no crew, the restrictions related to filming children in foster homes, and a shoestring budget and you get lots and lots and LOTS of delicious uncertainty of the universe, sometimes so much that I want to scream. (I’ll write a post about my last shoot, and you’ll see what I mean.) On a good day, I can laugh about it. On a bad day, I think that I’m a total masochist.

There have been many, many times when I have questioned whether I should just throw this film idea out the window and start over with something new. There’s a great line in a book called “Directing the Documentary” by Michael Rabiger, in which he says that somewhere around the middle of every production, he begins to fantasize about turning into a rural grocer so that he will never have to finish his film. I have a long list of escapist fantasies. But for whatever reason, I can’t seem to let the project go. There are plenty of logical reasons to scrap it, as well as a few illogical ones (a tarot card reader in a Thai restaurant I went to in January told me I should start a new project). But aside from the fact that I’ve already put so much work into it and would have a hard time finding a whole new subject in this limited time frame, there is something that continues to drive this documentary forward, albeit slowly and painfully. It’s my genuine curiosity about the children, and how they’re turning out, and what is happening to them. The decisions they make about what they want and how little control they have over most areas of their lives. The way that others perceive them, and how this affects their perception of themselves. Their desire to be part of a family and to be helpful and needed. These really are universal issues.

But in the world of filmmaking, and the media in general, universal themes cannot be dissociated from their sociocultural context. In other words, the first question I am likely to get is, “Why did you make this particular film in Romania?” It’s a valid question. I think that the answer I would give would not necessarily satisfy a board of film critics or a funder (or many Romanians), but the real answer is this: Because I’m here for nine months, because I care about these kids, and because I’m genuinely curious. Without curiosity, you already know the answers to the questions your film raises, and so will the audience. I’m just trying to take it one day at a time.

Mid-Term Report Part 2: Social and Cultural Adjustment

There is a substantial section in the grant report that asks about social and cultural adjustment. I was pretty familiar with Romanian culture, so rather than "culture shock" I've experienced more of a gradual cultural immersion, in which I've understood more and more about this country and the people. It has helped me to better understand Sorinescu, who has now spent exactly half of his life here and half in the U.S. Now I know why he likes to go to parties and dance until 5AM, and why he likes to eat yucky little bits of meat in stew-like concoctions. It's in his genes.

But anyway, there are the obvious ways one has to adapt to Romania; the ways everyone points out in guidebooks and expat websites and whatnot. "Adapting" usually means "getting used to," which usually means dealing with the things we don't like very much. There's the bureaucratic inefficiency (more on that later), the omnipresent second-hand smoke and diesel fumes, the bad driving, the phlegm splats all over the sidewalks (a real bummer when you have a rolling suitcase), the poverty, the way people park on the sidewalk, the long cold winter, the occasional rudeness of people in public places. There's of course the language, which is a whole subject in itself. Native English speakers are generally treated with extra courtesy here. It is completely unlike France in that sense; rather than being expected to speak Romanian, Romanians generally apologize to you if they don't speak English. You're almost a VIP as a Western expat; you have money, you are a witness who is going to bring back images and anecdotes from Romania to your own country. Many Romanians make an effort to treat you better than they would their fellow Romanians so that you will feel welcomed and will take back good reports. And if you mangle their language, they'll tell you how impressed they are that you're making the effort. I had an amusing exchange with a jovial taxi driver in Bistrita who asked me how long I'd been in Romania. I told him four months, and he said, "Long enough to learn to speak bad Romanian!" Exactly.

The topic of Romanian culture is one that I am no expert on. Interpreting a foreign culture is always an exercise in comparison; it's always predicated on one's own formative social and cultural experiences. There are a lot of things about Romanian culture that are ideally understood on their own terms, not as comparisons to the U.S. or Europe. But those are my points of reference, and as someone trying to make a film here I am reminded of that every day.

I think that my "social and cultural adjustment" is an ongoing process; one that you will pick up from my other posts. There's also some of that in the earlier blog--euromaniac.blogspot.com.

Mid-Term Report-Part 1

I just had to complete my midterm report for the US government grant I am receiving that allows me to live in Romania. This grant is essentially providing me with nine months of complete freedom to do whatever I want. Yes, the project I wrote the grant for is to make a documentary film. But there is no firm deadline, no required presentation of an end product. There is no accountability to speak of, except to oneself. So theoretically, I could lie around on the couch for nine months watching the Hallmark Channel. I could just lock my nice camera in the wood veneer armoire in my bedroom, put my jammies on, drag the bedcovers out to the living room, and settle in for the winter. I could eat chocolate until my teeth all fell out and I went into a diabetic coma. But since these are your taxpayer dollars, I feel like that just wouldn't be right.

I reported, in my mid-term report, that I had in fact completed pre-production, was well into production, was logging and transcribing tapes. I indicated that I was adjusting well socially and culturally and that I had enough money to cover the basics but not enough to hire a professional crew. I reported that the U.S. Embassy Staff and Commission facilitators were extremely helpful and accessible. But a mid-term report one makes for a granting organization is of course different from the one you make for your friends. So using the same categories provided by the official report, here is the Unofficial Midterm Report for Amynescu, Halfbright Grantee to Romania in Filmmaking.

I. Application and Pre-Application Process
As my close friends know, I really struggled with the decision about whether to take the grant this year. It's a long application process, and if it weren't for Sorinescu and my desire to learn his native language and do a project together in Romania, I probably wouldn't have applied in the first place. The application itself is a pain; it takes a long time and requires a huge amount of supporting materials (letters of recommendation, work samples, transcripts, letters of invitation from host country expressing interest in your project.) To be honest, I was kind of hoping I wouldn't get it! I had just moved to California, was rather liking it there, and was enjoying not being a student anymore. And after finishing my expensive thesis film, I was ready to work for a while--earn some money and work on other people's projects. I felt a bit burned out on being a film school graduate student, running on the engine of my own creativity with limited funding. I wanted to hang out around the "industry," figure out how people get more substantial financing, and let my next project idea gestate. I was enjoying going to film festivals and screenings and renting documentaries on Netflix. But then I got the grant, and Sorinescu got into graduate school at MIT in Boston, and so a move was imminent either way, whether it was to Los Angeles (without Sorinescu), Boston (with Sorinescu), or Romania (with Sorinescu for half the time). Being offered a grant like this is hard to refuse. I love to travel, I love being in Europe, I loved Romania when I had been there before. Nine months of total freedom to be creative and learn another language? How can you pass that up? Lots of people said that to me, and it's a good point. But I have to say that in the core of my being, I felt like I was being offered a big hunk of chocolate cake after a rich six-course meal (of free time and creativity, i.e., graduate school) and being the sugar fiend I am, I didn't want to turn it down. The problem is, the Halfbright isn't something you can wrap up and take home for later. You either eat it then and there or they give it to someone else.

So, the grant itself has been a lovely and generous treat that has made me feel rather nauseous. I highly recommend to anyone who is longing to move to another country to do their own project to apply for this grant. It's wonderful under the right circumstances, despite the fact that the health insurance sucks. But here are my two pearls of wisdom for the day:

1) Only you know what is best for you, even if everyone else thinks you're crazy. One person's delicious desert is another person's recipe for a diabetic coma. Listen to your intuition.
2) Assuming you didn't listen to your intuition, try to make the best of it anyway.

I'm working on #2. I'll follow up with the next section of my mid-term report in the following post.

EuRomania 2006

Dear Readers,

This first post marks the solo blogging debut of Amynescu, formerly a Euromaniac.blogspot.com team member. Following Sorinescu's departure from Romania, the editorial board was forced to acknowledge that the departure of the publication's key contributor had so radically changed the nature of the Euromaniac experience that the only solution was to retire the old posts and begin a new site. Sorinescu can now be found stateside at grama-at-mit.blogspot.com. Meanwhile, Amynescu has returned to Romania with Nicolescu, the Vice President of Eggdrop Productions, also known as Amynescu's Best Friend from Second Grade.

Given that the entire staff and editorial board of Amynescu.blogspot.com now consists solely of Amynescu herself, she finds it strange that she continues to refer to herself in the third person. She hopes that this affected mode of self-reference will be replaced in subsequent posts by the appropriate first person pronouns.