Hailing the Female Gaze: A Focus on Women Directors at the Romanian Cinematheque

17/03 - 23/04/2019 @ Romanian Cultural Institute London, 1 Belgrave Square, SW1X 8PH

This spring, the Romanian Cinematheque continues with a season of screenings that celebrate female creativity. Six original women directors - Anca Damian, Monica L?zurean-Gorgan, Ivana Mladenovic, Adina Pintilie, Iulia Rugin? and Ioana Uricaru- and their applauded films make up a diverse programme to suit all tastes: from gripping intrigues and tales of unexpected encounters to bitter immigration dramas.

All films have English subtitles.

 

Programme:

Sunday 17 March 2019, 19.00- UK Premiere

Lemonade/Luna de miere by Ioana Uricaru + Afterparty by Ivana Mladenovic


Ioana Uricaru is a director, screenwriter, and Assistant Professor of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College in the USA. She was born in Cluj, Romania, and earned her MSci in biochemistry from the University of Bucharest before she decided to become a filmmaker. In 2001 Ioana Uricaru relocated to Los Angeles to study at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she received her MFA in Film and Television Production and PhD in Critical Studies. Her scholarship on contemporary Romanian cinema has been published in The Velvet Light Trap, Film Quarterly, The Blackwell Companionto Eastern European Cinemas (edited by AnikoImre), and New Romanian Cinema (edited by Christina Stojanova and Dana Duma). Ioana Uricaru’s films have been included in the official selections at, among others, Cannes (2009), Sundance (2011), and the American Film Institute (2007). She co-directed the omnibus Tales from the Golden Age (Mobra Films, 2009), distributed commercially in over 30 countries.

Lemonade, her first feature project as a writer/director, which she calls a European take on the American Dream, was supported by the Cinefondation Residency of the Cannes Film Festival and the Sundance Directors’ lab program. The English& Romanian-language film tells the story of Mara, a single mother from Romania, who, while on a temporary work visa in the U.S., marries an American man she met just a few months earlier. Things don’t go as planned with her green card application and Mara is faced with abuses of power and excruciating decisions about what she’s willing to do to obtain legal status.The film was nominated for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the Heart of Sarajevo Prize for Best Director at the Sarajevo Film Festival and Best Film at International Women Film Festival of Sale, Morocco 2018. The film had its world premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlinale in 2018.

 

Lemonade/Luna de miere (2018)

Director: Ioana Uricaru

Screenplay: Ioana Uricaru, Tatiana Iona?cu

Writers: Tatiana Ionascu, Ioana Uricaru

Cast:   Malina Manovici, Dylan Smith, Steve Bacic, Milan Hurduc, Ruxandra Maniu, Víctor Gómez, Meghan Allen, Lisa Bronwyn Moore, Nastassia Markiewicz

Producer:Cristian Mungiu

Running time: 88 min

 

Preceded by: Afterparty directed by Ivana Mladenovic


Ivana Mladenovic was born in Serbia. After studying Law in Belgrade, she moved to Bucharest, where she graduated in Film Directing at the National School of Film and Theatre (UNATC) in 2010. In 2011 she finished her MA studies in Film Directing at the same university. Her short student films were shown at various film festivals around the world. She started working on her first feature documentary, Turn Off the Lights, in 2009. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2012 and later won the Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Documentary and the GopoAward for Best Romanian Documentary. Ivana Mladenovic appeared as an actress in Radu Jude's acclaimed feature film Scarred Hearts(2016).

Her short film Afterparty takes place on an eventful Saturday night, when protagonist Ioana wakes up after a car accident on the back seat of two strangers. The ride to the hospital with Dan and Paul is long and brings up some unexpected truths.

 

Afterparty (2009)

Director: Ivana Mladenovic

Writers: Raluca Manescu, Jiri Olteanu

Cast: Cristina Casian, Tudor Istodor, Andrei Runcanu

Running time: 16 min

 

Free entry. Please confirm your attendance HERE.