Amynescu

Nicolescu returns

2006-07-01T16:11:00.000+03:00

Nikki met me in Paris. We shopped for shoes, ate a lemon tart, and hung out in Eric and Susanne's beautiful, sunny apartment. Eric and Susanne are the lovely people who let me stay at their place for a whole week. I painted a really crappy picture of their back courtyard on a cheap canvas I bought from the Carnival D'Affaires down the street. Acrilyic paints with pen and ink. The final tableau was quite hideous, but it was very relaxing until it was actually finished. Nikki has adjusted well to Bucharest by simply removing most of her clothes and lying inert on the couch with a fan on.

How's the Film Coming?

2006-07-01T15:30:00.000+03:00

Oh, my favorite question. Everyone keeps asking, so I don't want to deprive my vast reading public of a critical update. Thanks for caring.

Well, I am in the process of wading through 43 hours of footage. "Wading" means watching, transcribing, logging into final cut pro, and digitizing so I can edit something coherent. As I watch, I try to edit in my head. What is emerging from the footage is two different films, as I see it.

1) A SUBJECTIVE FILM ABOUT ME, THE KIDS, AND ROMANIA--FOR AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE
One of the things I know to be true about myself is that I simply like to include a little bit of everything. I like poo-poo platters and buffets and survey classes and samplers and variety and basically, a little one of everything rather than one big thing. I also like to approach things from my personal perspective, maybe because I consider myself the authority only on my own experience, and including my own voice and acknowledging my presence seems more honest somehow. The problem (okay, maybe I shouldn't think of it as a problem) is that the subjective documentary style (personal voiceover, on-screen presence) is often more difficult to get funding and acceptance for. There is some degree of condescension, discomfort, or dogma in the documentary filmmaking world about the "personal documentary," even though that's what we're all making ultimately. The thing is, a lot of filmmakers and funders consider that the personal perspective should be implied, rather than stated or made obvious through voiceover. In writing, the memoir is becoming a more accepted form. But in filmmaking, it's very tricky to do well. Nevertheless, I've found myself making a subjective film about my experiences in Romania, with the kids, with Romanians in general (and how they feel about my film), and with the bigger picture. I am the only link between the footage of the kids from five years ago, and the footage I've shot this year. Can I pull it off? I guess it depends on whether I'm able to edit myself into a likable character and weave in all the different threads. Ultimately, it's a question of taste, right?. As an American, I see this subjective film addressing an American audience who knows little about Romania. Given that many films have been made about children in Romania, will distributors or festivals even be interested? I guess I'll see.
2) A "PUBLIC SERVICE" FILM ABOUT FOSTER CARE IN ROMANIA--FOR ROMANIAN AUDIENCES
A local production company has expressed interest in partnering with me to do a film about Romanian foster care for a Romanian public television audience. This would mean focusing (in the editing process) more on two or three kids and their immediate environment, rather than the six in the version above--which means cutting out Zoro and Anton because they aren't in foster care. This shorter film would let Romanian viewers know about foster care in Romania: how it works, how children with disabilities are being included in the larger community, how the system is becoming a model for other Eastern European countries. I would not appear in the film, but let the subjects speak for themselves.

I am supposed to meet with someone from TVR (Romanian public television) soon to talk about these options. I would like my work to air on TV here in Romania, but the universal disgust and frustration I encounter from Romanians when they ask me what my film is about has made me unsure how best to approach the general viewing public. I hope the TVR people can help me figure out which version they think their audiences would be more receptive to or interested in. Would they watch a film about Americans dealing with child welfare issues in Romania? Or will it just piss them off? Would they rather see a film about foster care in which my identity as an American is not obvious--something that a Romanian could have shot instead?

We'll see...

Paris

2006-07-01T15:08:00.000+03:00

I know it's a cliche, but I LOVE PARIS. LOVE IT. I just got back from the land of delicious crispy croissants and cute shoes to 100 degree temperatures in Bucharest. It's hotter outside than it is inside, so I have a choice of opening the windows to let the hot, smelly, heavy heat waft in (less like a breeze than a wooly wet blanket) or keeping the doors shut and blinds down and recircling the stuffy air with the grimy fan I just discovered on the balcony. When I returned from my week of Parisian living, my apartment in Bucharest had been sealed shut during a week of record-breaking heat, which allowed the distinctive smell of moth-killing spray my landlady doused the place with three months ago to be released from the fibers of the rugs and furniture. I wonder how many years it has taken off my life to live here.

I know it gets hot in France sometimes too, and that no city is perfect, but then why am I so happy whenever I go to Paris? Is it just the lingering positive associations I had with France from my early twenties, when I studied abroad? Is it the wide selection of paper supplies in the ubiquitous papeteries, the cafe culture, the language that was my first love? I never developed the interest in Romanian or Bosnian or spanish verb conjugations that I had for the French ones; I never fell for another culture quite the same way. The thing is, only visiting from time to time allows me to retain my romantic feelings for the city--like dating long-distance. I never get to know it well enough to discover its real flaws. All my French friends tell me that if I lived there, I would get over the infatuation. They point out how expensive it is, how it also gets too hot in the summer, how the traffic and noise wear them down. There are only so many paper supplies one can have, they insist. But I am not sure about that.

People also say, "Well why don't you move there?" It's that tricky work permit issue. Not so easy as a non-EU citizen. I could live on the lam, renewing my tourist visa every three months and doing work under the table...My camera is NTSC, so I'd have to trade it for a PAL model...But I don't think I have the energy for that kind of life right now. No, I'm afraid I'm going to have to return to the good old US of A. It's a big country; surely I'll find somewhere bearable to live, until I save up enough money to move to Paris.

The visit

2006-07-01T14:48:00.000+03:00

Zoro Found-part 2

2006-05-11T12:42:00.000+03:00

The video jogged Zoro's memory. He started to cry. I hugged him, and he rubbed his hand up and down on my back. He said in Hungarian that he wanted to go back to the school. His mother said that he couldn't go back; if he went, she'd never get him back again. Zoro's father agreed; if he let Zoro go, they'd never get him back. She began to watch me warily, not letting Zoro out of her sight. Eventually, I asked if we could come back the next day so that we could talk more about the whole situation. I needed to regroup. What had I done?

When I sat with Zoro and his mom the next day at the bilingual neighbor's house, she explained to me that she had to take the youngest of her five children, Zoro and one of his brothers, to the orphanage in Satu Mare when Zoro was two years old, because his father left her for another woman. Since she was homeless, she had no choice. She had no money or transportation, so she rarely visited the orphanage. One day she went to visit and found out that Zoro had been transferred to Beclean a month earlier, which was impossibly far away for her. She didn't know how to get there, and she didn't have the money anyway. While she was recounting this, she started to cry, and this got Zoro crying. She said he had never heard all this before, because she hadn't wanted to tell him how hard things were for her.

Her parental rights were eventually terminated, because during the years Zoro spent in Beclean, she never visited. So when social workers from Satu Mare contacted the aunt, the aunt legally adopted him so that his mother could get him back. Things are better now for the family; they have a house, though ten people share two rooms and two small beds.

The floor is bare dirt. It has a strong smell because they have no plumbing, water, or electricity, and the goose and pig wander in and out of the house when the door is open. The 4-inch black and white television is connected to a car battery. Every social worker is required to evaluate the family's living conditions before reintegrating a child into the home. Zoro's social worker evidently decided that these were acceptable living conditions.

Zoro doesn't go to school anymore because-according to Zoro and his mother--he is alays getting into fights. His mother says that he suffered a breakdown soon after arriving in the village, and that he is supposed to take medication--but she can't afford it. She gets $44 dollars a month for Zoro from the child welfare department--$14 of which is for medication that costs over $40 a month. If Zoro had been placed in a foster family, that family would have received $273 per month plus a clothing allowance. They would have been required to have a certain standard of living, including electricity, flooring, and running water. The $44 a month is a significant amount for Zoro's family; they have been able to make a few additions to the home. His mother makes a living by canning vegetables, which she then sells in the village. This is summertime work only; in the winter, things are very hard.

The situation is so complicated, and by making myself the only link between Zoro's present and past, I now feel an obligation to follow through. But how? The living conditions are so difficult; I can't imagine how the family made it through the winter. The neighbors' homes are even less solid, some roofless, or with plastic for doors and windows. But what is the alternative for him? The system will not take a child back unless abuse is reported, and even if that were going on (which I could not determine from such a short visit), where would he go? He has been legally adopted by his aunt. While Zoro liked living at the school in Beclean, he couldn't stay there forever. Given his emotional sensitivity and his intellectual limitations, I don't know how he would have fared at the age of 18 when he would be on his own. The children in Beclean raise this question a lot--what happens when we turn 18 and we're out the door? It's a scary prospect, when you have no family to help you.

The filmmaking aspect blurs ethical lines even further; I want to include Zoro's story, because I feel it's important to hear about his experience, as well as his mother's. Ninety percent of Romanian gypsies live in dire poverty, which is why about 70% of the abandoned children (approximately 5,000 per year) are of Gypsy ethnicity. These children have virtually no chance of being adopted by a Romanian family, so they are generally raised in the state system until they're old enough to be returned to their biological families, whom they've often never seen. Zoro's mother doesn't want him to leave, though I can't tell which reasons are most important to her. Is it that he helps around the house and in the fields? That he brings the family a little money each month? That she loves him as she says?

Quite telling was Zoro's comment to me, when his mother was out of range. I said, "Zoro, you told me three years ago that you wanted a family. Is this a family for you?" He said something in Hungarian that I have to have translated, but I think he said "I wanted a family, but..." Then he gestured at his mother and said, "Tiganca" ("Gypsy") and kind of shook his head and shrugged. Like many children of Roma (Gypsy) ethnicity, he grew up associating the Roma, or Tsigani, with crime and disrepute. They were shady characters to be avoided, not emulated or lived with. The word "Tsigan" has a pejorative connotation in Romanian that the English word "Gypsy" doesn't have--it is somewhat like "nigger" depending on the context, and is used as an insult by Romanians and Roma alike. However, many Gypsies refer to themselves as "Tsigani," and some have never even heard the more politically correct word "Roma." Roma children raised in an institution do not identify as Roma or "Tsigani," and the look on Zoro's face as he said this was so subtle...I can only interpret from my own limited perspective. It was half bemused, half resigned. Surprised, like he wondered how the hell he got here. When I showed him some video I'd shot of him that day, he said, "Who is that?" and his mother said, "Zoro--that's YOU!"

Zoro Found-part 1

2006-05-11T08:43:00.000+03:00

I found Zoro.

In this picture, we both look happy. The golden sunlight is highlighting our hair; Zoro's sweater looks clean and bright. In reality, we were both pretty traumatized. Oh, the hazards of filmmaking.

I sent a very long and detailed account of my production trip to Satu Mare to my family and Kim and Sorin and some others who know Zoro from our time at the camp with him. It's much too long to publish here, but here is a shorter version.

The working title of my film (though unlikely to be the final one) is "Finding Zoro: Journeys in Romania." I knew before I came back to Romania that a number of children from the summer camp (www.copiiproject.org) had either been placed in foster families or "reunited" with their biological families. My film is about the recent (2002-2006) push in Romania to deinstitutionalize children who grew up in large facilities by placing them in family settings. I have spent most of my time here at the Scoala Speciala in Beclean, where we originally met all the children. Four of the five children in my film still attend school there; three are in foster families, and one is still living in the school most of the time. In November, I was able to obtain the address of Zoro's aunt, whom I was told had agreed to take him. According to teachers and students in Beclean, Zoro had wanted very much to stay at the school, crying for two weeks when told he had to go. The school's social worker said that Zoro had been stealing and misbehaving at school which made it difficult to place him in foster care. Also, a new law required that children in state care be returned to the counties of their birth, so Zoro, along with several other children, was transferred to neighboring Satu Mare County in 2003. Sorin and I tried to go find him around Thanksgiving, but the weather was bad and we had a minor accident on the road, and decided that navigating the unknown rural countryside in our poorly insured and extremely expensive Budget rent-a-car was just too risky during snow season. So I have been impatiently waiting for the snow to melt, and when Nikki got back from her monthly jaunt in Eastern Europe, we decided it was time to go find him.

We rounded up a Romanian translator and set off for Cluj, where we rented another poorly insured rental car from a sketchy company and drove to Satu Mare, billed by Lonely Planet as the ugliest city in Romania (not true--it's Bucharest, hands down.) The scenery was really nice; I miss my car and it felt great to drive, even given the nerve-wracking driving conditions. Once we actually got to Satu Mare, which is about 3 and 1/2 hours from Beclean, it was not hard to find Zoro's village, although it was a long and bumpy ride over unpaved roads full of potholes that would indeed have been unnavigable in the snow without a four wheel drive. We were stopped by the border police near the village; they later came to Zoro's house to see what we were up to. Zoro's village is only about 5Km from the Hungarian border, which is why, as we soon found out, no one there spoke Romanian--including Zoro.

I expected that Zoro might be living in poor conditions. I expected that his aunt might speak Hungarian, that the Roma (Gypsy) community he lived in might be hostile to outsiders. But I was totally unprepared for the fact that Zoro not only did not recognize me, but no longer spoke Romanian. As it turned out, we received a warm and curious welcome from most of the neighborhood, who stood by as I attempted to communicate with this boy I had spent so much time with, who two and a half years ago spoke only Romanian, and who now registered nothing when I told him, through the only fluently bilingual neighbor, who I was. Did he remember Beclean? No. Did he remember the camp? No. Kim? No...The kids? No. He was totally bewildered. The 30 or so onlookers were fascinated. Who were these foreigners in a blue Daewoo, waving cameras around and speaking through a chain of translators? I was simultaneously trying to direct Nikki-who had never shot video in her life--to capture this strange scene on tape so I could talk to Zoro, and trying to figure out what was going on. Turns out Zoro's aunt turned him over to his biological mother and father, who had both appeared on the scene. Figuring it was too late to turn back now, I decided to use my camera to show him the video we had made in the first summer camp, called "The King Who Wanted a Boy." It's a fairytale written by Adelina, another child from the camp. In it, Zoro plays a prince living in a faraway land who is called to resolve a family dispute. Here is a picture Nikki took of him watching it. His mother is watching over his shoulder.

Thanks, Christ

2006-04-26T03:31:00.000+03:00

A year ago, I celebrated Easter with Sorinescu at a Romanian church in LA. Well, celebrated isn't really the right word--I think I complained most of the time about being cold. But back then, I learned this little exchange you're supposed to have on Easter (which I think I am spelling and/or translating incorrectly-Sorinescu please correct if so):

-Hristos a inviat! (Christ has risen!)--(Thanks for correction, S.)
to which you respond:
-Adevarat, a inviat! (True, he has risen!)

I am not so sure it's true at all--the Christ being alive part--but I'm willing to humor Romanians on their special day. However, I hadn't had the chance to say it for a whole year, so when a neighbor in my apartment building greeted me with "Hristos a inviat!" it took me by surprise and all I managed to say was "Multumesc!" (Thanks!)

I assume she heard my accent and realized I was just an idiot foreigner--an amusing anecdote to recount during the family's Easter meal.

Later that day, Nikki and I took a very nice stroll through Herestrau Park, where Nikki took pictures of the spring flowers and the red plastic egg-balloons that were hung throughout the park. The red eggs are an important part of the Romanian Orthodox Easter celebration; they symbolize the blood-soaked eggs supposedly lain under the cross when Christ was dying. They've got the chocolate bunnies too, but Easter here is a serious affair, more about religion and ritual than in the US, where the capitalist enterprise has made it mostly about marshmallow Peeps and plastic grass.

Documentarian as Neurotic Sociopath

2006-04-26T02:28:00.000+03:00

Nikki can't stop laughing at me. She laughed so hard tonight she almost peed in her pajamas. I'm just glad she has a sense of humor, because others might have more readily wrung my neck.

The people who know me well, and tolerate me anyway, know that I can be a wee bit dramatic. I am given to periodic fits of despair and self-deprecation, during which those around me feel compelled to offer consolation and encouragement, which I vigorously refute in my determination to convince them that things are every bit as awful as I think they are. I can't say I am proud of this little routine; frankly, I think it's acceptable to act that way when you're 13, but ideally you grow out of it. Some of us are late bloomers, I guess.

Anyway, the precipitating event for my crisis today was a phone call I made to Denisa, the director of the school where I'm shooting. I truly dislike making these phone calls, as it is even harder for me to speak and understand Romanian over the phone than it is in person. When Sorinescu was here, I made him do the dirty work, but now I am on my own with the phone. So I called the school, and Denisa came running breathlessly to the phone, and I asked her what was up. She said that none of the kids were back from Easter vacation yet. I asked her if Anton (one of my main film subjects) had stayed in the institution over the break, since he doesn't have a foster family. She said no, that he had gone home over the break for the first time with his biological parents. I said, "No way!" (or some approximation thereof in Romanian) and she said "Yes! It was time to simply insist," and I said, "I can't believe this development happened when I wasn't there!" and she said, "Yes, it's a very big development!" She said that he would be back to the school tomorrow, but he would not be going back to the family again for a while.

I got off the phone, totally flabbergasted. Anton reunited with his biological parents? I had just planned out my shoot for this week, which was to highlight the contrast between Anton's life at the institution and lack of a family with the home life of some of the kids in foster care. Friday is his birthday, and I was going to shoot the monthly party they have at the school for all the kids born that month. Then I was going to follow Anton to the farm where he works on weekends, with a rural family who feed him and let him stay for a few days in exchange for milking the cows and shoveling manure. I was already disappointed that I had missed something important a few weeks ago--when Anton located the biological brother that even the social worker didn't believe existed, and brought him to the school asking if they could let him stay there because the brother is homeless. I began to be angry with myself for not calling Denisa before Easter break; for avoiding that task because it stressed me out. I played out the scene in my mind that I had missed: Anton being told that his biological mother had been located; being taken there by a social worker, meeting her for the first time. In his interviews with me, Anton said that he had never met his mother, and just wanted to know what she looked like. I imagined the other siblings looking curiously at him as he appeared at the house, reaction shots of curious neighbors, the awkward first moments. Having a meal with his real family. I plugged myself and my camera right into this missed fantasy scenario, as though I would've automatically been granted permission to film the whole thing (which actually, I probably would have--since people in Romania are generally pretty camera-friendly.)

Then, lying in despair on my bed, hot tears of frustration welling up as I berated myself for not living in the tiny grim town of Beclean where I could be capturing these moments; for not raising more money to hire a production manager to plan things for me, for not calling before Easter, for not being able to control the universe and script out real people's lives in a way that was convenient for my production schedule, I told Nikki very convincingly just how awful it all was. She listened patiently and compassionately, trying to tell me that I was being too hard on myself, that it was very challenging to be doing this on my own with such a small budget, and that no one had mentioned any possibility of Anton being reunited with his mother. She then realized that she needed to go buy a plane ticket before the agency closed, so she had to leave. When she was gone, there was no one left to convince that things were irreparably, horrendously, terribly awful, so I got up and ate some chocolate. Then I decided that I would call Denisa one more time to see how long Anton would be with his biological family. Maybe I could still get something on tape.

The social worker Emishe answered rather than Denisa, and I told her I was surprised that Anton was in the family. She said yes, he'd be back from Rebrisoara tomorrow. "Rebrisoara?" I said. "Yes, he's at the farm," she said. "I thought he was with his biological family!" I replied. Apparently Denisa was listening in, because just then her voice came on the line too. "Amy? I said Anca went to her biological family for the weekend. Anca Nicoletta." "Not Anton?" I said, relief making me go weak and tingly. Indeed, Denisa had misheard my earlier question, though I can't imagine why she would think I was asking about Anca. I don't even know who Anca Nicoletta is.

So once it had been clearly established that Anton was still legally abandoned, and therefore still conforming to the story structure I had laid out for the film, my anxiety lifted and I began looking forward to the shoot again. Perhaps other documentary filmmakers would read this and understand and not think I am a terrible heartless beast, but other human beings would have to wonder. Of course I hate to see Anton longing for a reunion with his mother while shoveling manure in BFE, and of course I want him to realize his dreams. Only I would prefer that if this happens, I am there with a blank tape and a charged battery and my release forms, so that it can all make it into the final cut.

The Kids

2006-04-22T20:52:00.000+03:00

Nikki finally got her pictures back from one of our last trips to Bistrita. Here are some of the kids I've been stalking this year:

This is Anton (center) with a couple of friends.

And Mihaela:

And a few of the little ones at the school:

Blooms

2006-04-22T16:21:00.000+03:00

I had never fully appreciated springtime until this year. Growing up, the Springtime Tallahassee Parade was a big annual event, where much ado was made about blooming azaleas and whether the figurehead of Andrew Jackson should be allowed to lead the procession since he was a racist and a slaughterer of Indians (www.springtimetallahassee.org). I don't know whether the parade was fun to watch because I always had to be in it, doing back flips, twirling a baton, or playing a saxophone--in my progression from Tumbling Tot to band nerd. Spring in Florida means that summer is about a week away, which means that the backs of your legs are going to be sticking to the car seat for the next four months. What's fun about that?

Since spring in Florida was so short as to be almost undetectable, I just didn't know how great it could be until I spent the winter in Romania. It's kind of wimpy of me to say this, because Romania's winter is pretty similar to Pennsylvania's. But with the gray concrete buildings and the drizzly fog, it just feels longer and colder. People slog around Bucharest in rubber boots with their faces all scrunched up, looking mean and grouchy. And then, during the five days I was in Italy, a miracle occurred. The sun came out, the snow melted, the leaves sprouted from the tree branches, and the dog turds thawed on the sidewalk. I have been watching this reawakening with fascination and relief. The flower shops seem to have doubled in number. Dandelions have sprouted along the roads. Kiosks for books, sunglasses, and Easter kitsch have emerged in front of the KFC in Piata Romana, and the slogging and scrunching has eased into a stroll. The beggars are returning to the streets; homeless gypsy mothers and babies and children, old women in headscarves, alcoholics and amputees.

One of the most impressive things of all is the transformation of Herestrau Park.

At some point during the thaw, the city must've sent out an army of Pansy Elves to do a massive landscaping job around all the fountains and gazebos. Bucharest can't get its shit together to fill a pothole, but they sure know how to plant their flowers. Herestrau+springtime+outdoor cafe+vanilla frappe=happiness.

Right Before He Escaped

2006-04-20T00:06:00.000+03:00

I just found all the photos that Sorinescu downloaded from his camera while he was here. Since this blog has been pretty colorless since the digital camera went back to the US with S, I thought I'd insert them here and there. Right after this photo was taken, the puppy wriggled loose and stepped in the freshly poured cement that was to be a new sidewalk, then I stepped in it myself as I was trying to keep the mother dog from getting out of her pen. She bolted too and it took the owners of the hotel 15 minutes to track her down. She had had enough of nursing 8 hungry puppies and just wanted to visit the neighbors.

Dear Readers

2006-04-19T23:58:00.000+03:00

I don't have any, do I? :)

I just got a spam comment to a recent post. Not sure how that happens, but I have no idea who the guy is! I got kind of excited for a minute, though--I thought maybe someone had actually looked at my blog!

Pisica si Pianul

2006-04-19T23:51:00.000+03:00

This evening Nikki and I went with Adina to a free concert at Palatul Sutu, near Piata Universitate. The two piano players performed a sonata written by Mozart at the age of 9, while the resident tabby cat sat in front of the piano carefully cleaning between each of her toes.

Healers

2006-04-19T22:31:00.000+03:00

I finally went to the doctor to get rid of my lingering scourge. It had simply been too many days of feeling exhausted and feverish. I went to a fancy new clinic in Primaveri this time, and paid $10 for a consultation with a very pleasant Romanian doctor who took my blood pressure, listened to my lungs, and prescribed me antibiotics, which cost $30 at the pharmacy. I don't know if it's because I was a foreigner, but there was no paperwork, no waiting in the waiting room, no filling out of medical histories, no questions about allergies. The no waiting part probably had to do with my being able to pay the full price of the visit, which for many Romanians is very expensive. But I'm still not very clear on the workings (or lack thereof) of the Romanian health care system.

The first time I went to the doctor in Romania, I went to the first place on the list given to us by Halfbright at our orientation. It turned out to be in Ghencea, a Bucharest suburb full of muddy puddles, gray cement high-rises, skinny stray dogs, and building supply stores (a pretty typical Bucharest neighborhood, actually). The doctor there was a newly arrived missionary from Texas, about my age, whose wife had long "had Eastern Europe on her heart." So he, his wife, and their three children had moved to Ghencea so that he could minister to street children at this clinic. He was particularly concerned about the abortion rate in Romania, which is currently equal to the birth rate. Alarming indeed, but so was this poster in his office (which I can't seem to insert right-side up):

The first panel reads, "God, why haven't you sent us people to cure cancer and AIDS, to solve the problem of world hunger and all our social problems?" God replies from above, "I sent them!"

In the second panel, the man asks, "Well, then where are they?" and God responds: "They were aborted!"

This is a good, clear, realistic message to send to the people of Romania, don't you think? Your unborn child is the next Jonas Salk. Therefore, if you abort, you're effectively killing thousands of the disease-afflicted at the same time, not to mention pissing off God.

Anyway, I genuinely appreciate the fact that the doctor loves the Lord enough to live in Ghencea and provide low-cost medical care to Romanians. I would have a very difficult time making that kind of sacrifice. I also agree that abortion should not be used as a form of birth control, and that reducing its very high rate here is an admirable goal--through ACCESSIBLE FAMILY PLANNING SERVICES. Not through bullshit religious propaganda that only serves to lay a guilt trip on an exceedingly poor and already God-fearing population. Stating that an unborn human life has potential is one thing; naming abortion as the cause of cancer and AIDS is another, and putting such a poster in the waiting room of a doctor's office is medically irresponsible. Needless to say, I did not go back to see Dr. Texas.

Fortunately, Alexander Fleming (who discovered penicillin) wasn't aborted, so at least my bronchitis is cured.

A Little Sickly

2006-04-03T09:24:00.000+03:00

I have some sort of flu thing for the first time since I arrived in Romania. It's most unpleasant--headache, upset stomach, fever, extreme fatigue. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if I could just sleep for a few days, but the problem is, I've scheduled a trip to Bistrita with Nora, a Romanian cinematographer who is ever so difficult to pin down because she is talented and in much demand. I've coordinated meetings there and a place to stay. I am supposed to leave on the night train tonight, which is a nausea-inducing experience even when one is perfectly healthy. I feel like I can't cancel! So wish me luck, dear reading public, in making it through the next few days...

Sweating with Celebrities

2006-04-02T19:57:00.000+03:00

I resisted it for a long, long time. I said I was just going to run in the park; I wasn't going to worry about being bitten by stray dogs or stared at by adolescent boys. I would just walk a lot, and run up and down my building's 10 flights of stairs. But walking wasn't bringing my stress level down enough, and running in Herestrau Park was not only getting boring, it was hurting my knees. The elderly neighbors in my building were confounded by my repeated jogging past their doors, and their little dogs kept yipping at me. I tried to find another place that was cheaper, but I knew I would not feel like walking 30 minutes to hang out in a sweaty basement to use an old stairmaster when I could just run up and down my stinky stairs.

So after much deliberation, I am now officially a 3-month member of the World Class Fitness Center Bucharest, possibly the most expensive gym on the face of the planet. And despite my guilt about spending per month what amounts to many Romanians' monthly salaries, and despite the fact that I desperately need that money for production, I LOVE IT.

In Bucharest, people just don't go out running or riding bikes--they're afraid of being bitten by the 50,000 stray dogs that live in the city. (Despite the fact that most of them are friendly, a Japanese businessman was killed on January 29 by a stray, and about 50-60 people are treated in hospitals every day for dog bites.) I love dogs, but it is nervewracking when they bark viciously or come running after you because they think you have food. But the dogs aren't really the reason I joined the gym. I joined it because I needed yoga classes (the only ones in the city) and a place to work up a sweat (the spinning classes are the best I've taken anywhere) and a place that's right on the bus line, so it's easy to get to from my apartment.

But I do struggle with some guilt feelings. Aside from the astronomical expense, it bothers me that a Bucharest establishment uses English as its official language, and that if one English speaker shows up in a class of 30 Romanians, the instructor will amiably switch to English. (The company is not locally owned; the manager is Swedish). The clientele, they say, is 50% expat. The other 50% are Romanians who can afford the membership, and judging from the looks of them, they appear to be mostly members of the local mafia or swimsuit models. I don't know how the latter maintained their incredible figures before the existence of the World Class Fitness Center, but I'm pretty sure that no matter how often I go to the gym, I will never look like that. I think I'm also going to pass on the tanning beds. But my new exercise regime among Bucharest's elite has brought my stress level down considerably, and I've reduced my chances of getting rabies by at least 85%. So in the end, I think it will have been worth it.

Asta e

2006-03-27T10:50:00.000+03:00

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

2006-03-26T05:21:00.000+03:00

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?

2006-03-15T20:38:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-15T19:27:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-11T00:06:00.000+02:00

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?

2006-03-06T20:56:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-06T13:27:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-06T11:55:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-05T00:49:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-04T01:26:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-04T00:47:00.000+02:00

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.