Interview with Florin Bican Ever since he returned to Romania, 56 year-old writer and translator Florin Bican has been trying to stimulate local children’s literature, which has been overwhelmed by translations after 1990. Publishing houses refuse to take a chance on Romanian authors, although there are writers with realist approaches interested in this field. There is a heap of criticism levelled at the phrase “literatura pentru copii” (“literature for children” – the translation of “children’s literature” into Romanian, trans. note). Could we use it in such a way, given the fact that books meant for children are actually projections of…
by Yvette Feuer My name is Yvette Feuer and I am an actor and what we call in Hungary, a drama pedagogue. After working for more than 10 years as an actor in the alternative theatre field in Budapest, Hungary, in the year 2001I left for the USA. I was extremely lucky and happy to receive the Fulbright Grant and it enabled me to do what I really wanted to do: to start again and study, study, study. I went to a small, liberal arts college where I graduated in 2003 receiving an MFA in Theater. Sarah Lawrence College, located…
by Marius Bogdan Tudor and Mihai Lukács The post-World War 2 modernizing drive of the Romanian state manifested itself in two essential policies: industrialization and the democratization of culture. The two approaches were complementary: first of all, industrialization offered the possibility of involving a mostly rural workforce in the production sector in order to rebuild a war-torn economy on the basis of scientific Socialism and, in the long run, the possibility of a state-fueled proletarian class. Second of all, building an infrastructure of cinemas, theaters, performance halls (the future “union houses”) and libraries at the national level, doubled up by…
Interview with Zoe Costache Everyone in the theater calls her Zoe or Misses Zoe. She’s 53 and wants to retire from Teatrul Foarte Mic (The Very Small Theatre). She worked at the wardrobe, at dressing room maintenance, and now she’s a technical director and handles dressing room maintenance as well. She’s very high-spirited and very observant. She’s fond of every performance and she’s very devoted to her job. When did you start working for Teatrul Foarte Mic? I was transferred here from Teatrul Masca. I had been working there for two years. The actors cried when I left. I came…
by Vladan Jeremić and Rena Rädle The economic devastation after the break-up of Yugoslavia and almost complete deindustrialization of Serbia that followed represent one of the crucial problems today. Everything that could be privatized in Serbia has been privatized, the majority of factories and businesses have been dissolved and their estates sold. The import lobby of domestic comprador bourgeoisie has been working for the last decade on abolishing the local production and placing instead of it imported products that the citizens of Serbia should buy from credits, thus incurring more and more debt. In this hostile setting only rare companies…
by Valentina Iancu Karl Marx’s redefining of labor and its role in society entailed a symbolic glorification of the worker in the Marxist imaginary. “The reason for the ascent of labor in the modern age has been its productivity, and Marx’s seemingly blasphemous idea that labor (not God) created man, or that labor (not reason) set man apart from other animals, simply meant the most radical phrasing of a state of affairs which the entire modern age agreed on.[1] In this context, artists sheepishly reached out to social classes that had been ignored for centuries. The interest in physical labor…
by Nicolae Mandea The films which Nicolae Mandea analyzes in his essay – Răsună valea (The Valley Is Bustling – 1950, director Paul Călinescu), Puterea şi adevărul (Power and Truth – 1972, Manole Marcus) and 8 Martie (March 8 – 2012, Alexandru Belc) – focus on representations of the social repertoire of labor, emphasizing the accuracy of the details. The painting-like representations of the scenes of labor are usually rich in information about the characters, the spacial context, the world of objects and the typical attire. At the same time, the physical activities leave an indelible mark on the human…