Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Europe / East / Romania / All Films

The Song of Aida

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 11:34:33 GMT

As a teenager, Aida dreamed of becoming a model and singer. Now in her thirties, she is trapped in an arranged marriage and feels stuck living in a shack in a Roma community in Bari, Italy. She suffers from depression, longs to leave her marriage and return to Romania, where living conditions are better. Shot over a twenty-year period, filmmaker Giovanni Princigalli offers an intimate portrait of one woman’s struggle for emancipation, providing insights into life in the deeply patriarchal and tradition-bound Roma community in Bari, Italy. Princigalli makes it clear from the opening sequence that the Roma community in Bari does not represent that of Roma in other parts of Europe today.

Princigalli was born in Bari, Italy and studied Political Sciences at the University of Bari. His first film Japigia Gagi (Roma Stories) profiles the Bari community as he found it in 2001 and 2002. Song of Aida draws on footage from this early project as well as from visits in 2014 and in the early 2020s, when he focused on Aida’s story. This longitudinal view allows viewers to embrace Aida’s struggle as she finds her voice and independence from her family. The film also shows poetic animations that are used to illustrate the imagination of the protagonists.

“This film is the story of her [Aida’s] struggle for emancipation, independence and a new life outside the Roma camp.” — Giovanni Princigalli, Spring 2024

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

21st edition of the Int'l Human Rights Film Festival (FICDH), Argentina, 2025

Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA) Int'l Ethnographic Film Festival, Norway, 2024

Ethnocineca Int'l Documentary Film Festival, Vienna, 2024

Festival de Cine Etnográfico de Ecuador, Ecuador, 2024

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Into the Field

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:45:00 GMT

Into the Field
Buy Now: $295.00

This film examines the everyday secular lives of nuns residing in the Romanian Orthodox monastery of Varatec. The majority of the 450 members of this monastery live as small groups in private houses, much like regular villagers, rather than inside the walls of the communal abbey. Throughout the year, they integrate their duties at home with their religious responsibilities to their community and to the church.

By visually exploring the social aesthetics of the monastery, the film depicts certain aspects of the nuns' everyday, lived experiences. Instead of exclusively focusing on the spiritual qualities of monastery existence, it documents the secular aspects of the nuns' relationships, activities, and routines, and offers a glimpse into the concrete ways in which they negotiate their identities within the separate yet connected spaces of home and church.

The film also incorporates brief sequences of stop-motion animation, demonstrating some of the trials and tribulations that anthropologists sometimes encounter during filming and fieldwork. Intended as a reflexive meta-commentary, these passages point to some of the unpredictable and often uncontrollable processes of ethnographic investigation.

“Visually, Grossman captures the dazzling Romanian countryside in summer as well as the women's calmness and happiness with the life they have chosen... an interesting ethnographic field study of a small but vibrant closed community in central post-Soviet Europe. Recommended for undergraduates.”
— Linda Frederiksen, Washington State University,
Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Student Award for Excellence, Society for Visual Anthropology / AAA Film & Video Festival, 2006
Romanian Public Television Award: First Prize for Best Student Film, Astra International Film Festival, 2006
First Prize, Student Film Competition, Göttingen International Film Festival, 2006
Honorable Mention, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, US, 2007
Honorable Mention, Student Section, Iowa City Int'l Documentary Festival, 2006

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Jakub

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:12:00 GMT

Jakub
Buy Now: $320.00

Jakub, by the Czech filmmaker Jana Sevikova, presents an extensive ethnographical-sociological study of the life of the Ruthenians, filmed in the Maramuresh mountains in the north of Romania and in the former Sudetenland in Western Bohemia. The film was made over a period of five years during the time of both totalitarian regimes and was completed in 1992 after the revolution.

Jakub Popovich is the primary character, whose story provides the link between 1947, when the film begins, and the present. Scientists at the Ethnographic-Folklore Institute, a part of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague acted as collaborators in the making of this film. The film has received international attention from filmmakers for its unique structure and cinematic quality, as well from educators and research scientists for its content.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Nyon Festival of Documentary Film, 1992

Berlin Film Festival, 1993

Minneapolis Film Festival, 1993

Montage '93 Rochester NY

Toronto Film Festival, 1993

Olympia Film Festival, 1993

Award for Excellence, Society for Visual Anthropology, 1994

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Lost and Found

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 06:41:00 GMT

Lost and Found
Buy Now: $295.00

The legacy of the governmental policies concerning population growth and the family under the Communist rule in Romania of Nicolae Ceausescu were devasting. This documentary presents an uncompromising look at the situation of scores of thousands of children in the state orphanages today. Winner of 20 international awards, Lost and Found is an excellent film for the study of recent eastern European history, politics and their effects on health and human welfare.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

CINE Golden Eagle Award, 1992

Silver Medal, Chicago International Film Festival

Bronze Apple, National Educational Film Festival

Emmy Nomination

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Piemule

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 10:58:00 GMT

Piemule
Buy Now: $295.00

Piemule is a film about an ethnic group of Czechs that settled over a hundred and fifty years ago in the hills not far from Timisoara, Romania. Craftsmen and farmers, the ancestors of today's residents came to the Romanian highlands around the year 1822 with their families. Director Jana Sevikova succeeds in capturing the way of life in Rovensko, a remote village where time is measured by the changing seasons and their respective religious ceremonies and rituals.

Employing a complex structure of composition, Piemule depicts the history and the moral code of this small enclave of Czech culture, which while isolated within foreign surroundings, has retained its language, culture and national identity. The film contains the testimonies of individual people and a few essential historical facts: a song depicting the biblical story of the original sin threads its way through the whole film, showing the religious character of these people. Living in relative material poverty, these ethnic Czechs are left to their own resources to weather the whims of Ceaucescu's regime.

In 1993, the filmmaker returns to the village ten years after she had completed filming. To her surprise, life in Rovensko had remained unchanged, even after the fall of Romania's dictatorship - time here had already stopped during the last century.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Margaret Mead Film Festival, 1992

Pacific Film Archives, 1992

Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History, 1993

Field Museum Chicago, 1993

London Film Festival, 1992

Cinema in Transition, NY, 1993

San Francisco International Film Festival, 1993

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