class="">CINE-CONCERT: ROMANIA 1939: 50 YEARS BEFORE THE FALL OF THE IRON CURTAIN RESTITUTION: DEM DEMETRESCU

“1939. 80 years ago, while Hollywood launched the exceptional “Gone with the Wind” or the chanting and enchanting “Wizard of Oz”, and Cannes strove to create a festival to counterbalance Venice, that had too obviously turned fascist, pro-Nazi, Romania was a flourishing, fascinating country, passionate about preserving the image of a splendid destiny, to be soon interrupted, for half a century. An artist of black and white frames, sadly forgotten today, Dem. Demetrescu invites to a journey through time, accompanied by the original music composed by Foley’Ala, bringing back to life a series of images, meticulously collected and ordered by Adrian Buga and Radu Rădescu! A cine-concert, a puzzle with a theatrical commentary at its best.”– Irina-Margareta Nistor

Dem Demetrescu or simply DEM., as he signed his entire inter-wartime oeuvre, is well- known especially as a magazine and children’s books illustrator, painter and photographer. But it is little known that he was also a creator of animations and films. His documentary “Ethnographic Romania”, started as a film project meant to illustrate the homonymous, unfinished atlas of 1938. Fragments of animations and documentaries dating back to 1936-1939 were preserved, but never edited, in absence of a script. Through the efforts of Dem Creativ, a platform dedicated to the recollection of Dem’s body of work, and with original soundtrack, the cine-concert presents a collection of original film material never published before, the full content of Dem’s footage: the animation to the images of “Ethnographic Romania” (with live commentary inspired by the original texts), an unfinished version of the animated film „Mother-goat and Her Three Kids” and documentary footage from a series on socio-economic, cultural-ethnographic and Romanian tourism promotion themes, that includes footage of various kinds of ceremonies and celebrations, and even some that describe the monastic universe. This archive footage brings a suggestive image of the rural and urban inter-war richness and diversity, a re-discovery of an unfairly forgotten film artist.