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.