Astra Film

The Last Jew

Director: Florin Iepan
Country: Romania
Year: 1996
Length: 20

Tirgu Frumos is a small town in North Moldavia. Out of the thousands of Jews who once lived here, only one is left. His name is Avrum Cotter. This film is about him, about the Jewish cemetery, a  common grave, some memories and the questions of the present.

Life is elsewhere

Director: Radu Muntean
Country: Romania
Year: 1995
Length: 13

A documentary about life in a nuns’ convent. Nuns and their neighbours speak about their expectations and their  relationship with “the outside world”.

Tonel and Vieru or The Meaning of The Ballad

Director: Mugur Vasiliu 
Country: Romania
Year: 1995
Length: 20

The memory of a tragic accident - a crime that happened fifty years ago at a peasant wedding - was transformed into a ballad. The victim’s father - the one who ordered the ballad - organises the revenge and another crime.

Elves

Director: Cristina Struteanu
Country: Romania
Year: 1995
Length: 15

These thrilling mythical characters still play an active role in the world of the scattered villages. The film illustrates  the stories told by “witnesses” of the elves’ existence. An attempt to reveal the rural atmosphere that makes contact with the Fourth Dimension possible.

Swarms

Director: Gabriel Hanganu
Country: Romania
Year: 1996
Length: 10

The members of an Orthodox hermitage in the mountains of Moldavia, Romania make preparations  for the feast of the monastery, each year on Holy Saints’ Sunday. On this occasion, peasants as well as town dwellers from the neighbourhood join them for the holy services and the final community lunch.
As soon as they leave, life turns back to  its original quiet rhythm.

Block 103

Director: D.H.Dheurle, Valentin Suciu   
Country: France/ Romania
Year: 1995
Length: 30

A film about the tenants of one block of flats in Bucharest, representing a social mixture that includes a worker and a deputy manager in a geological enterprise. About people that were placed against their will in a living space and they are unable to see any way to improve their life.

Babu

Director: Cornel Mihalache
Country: Romania
Year: 1995
Length: 63

Babu was a political dissident, imprisoned by the “Securitate” and killed in the ‘80s. This film is an attempt to discover the mysterious circumstances of his death.

Dark corridors and shabby appartments make up the setting of this film. Hard to believe as it may be, the location is the heart of Bucharest. The rooms offer too little privacy so that people can tell you everything about their neighbours. Their sordid life is coloured by cheap conflicts and some real dramatic events. The ap­partments look into a dirty courtyard sur­rounded by high buildings. But those who look high enough can see a patch of blue.

The summer weekend brings crowds of day-trippers to the Transylvanian resort of Ocna Sibiului. They are keen to sunbathe, cover themselves with mud, play games, eat ice cream, have sex or simply float in the salted lakes. These people are determined to have a good time in spite of the lack of toilets. This film is an intriguing study of an extraordinary East-European resort.

It all began when a radio transmitter appeared at the Mental Healthcare Hospital in Jebel, 24 km away from Timişoara. Though confronted with prejudice and bureaucracy, the patients decide to start their own radio station right there, in the hospital. The inmates get ready to act as news reporters, interviewees, singers and technicians. A licence is hard to get, but still Radio Jebel is broadcasting these people's craving for communication.

Ioan is the priest of a mountain village in Transylvania. He is known as an exorciser. Strange things happen sometimes in the small village church, as Father Ioan has the power to unchain terrible forces. The film approaches this phenomenon with caution, leaving the viewer the freedom to judge whether it is just a fraud or a real insight into another world.

Antiquity shops in Bucharest are saturated with objects of art. You can find anything there, from paintings, clocks or china to pieces of jewlery. These places have an aesthetics of their own. Who brings in all these objects for sale and who buys them? In a changing society, there are parallel worlds living simultaneously. Some are dying out, others are just emerging. The film observes the transfer of objects of art from one world to another.

In the 12th century, Hungarian kings en­couraged the settlement of German colo­nists in Transylvania to defend their eastern border. At the end of the 20th cen­tury, most of the Transylvanian Germans have moved to Germany. Very few chose to stay and now they witness the rapid and dramatic changes occurring in their once prosperous villages. The film tells the story of a German family from the village Stolzenburg, who live in the old fortified church. Out of an well-organised commu­nity, they are the only ones left and have to cope with this situation.

The village Sviniţa had to be evacuated and flooded when a dam was built on the Danube. But even before that, the communists destroyed the village church. People have built themselves new houses, but they have not abandoned the old church. All  religious celebrations take place on the lake shore, where they can see the ruined walls rise from the water. 

A young man finds out he has AIDS and commits suicide. As if the tragic loss were not enough, his family is confronted with the refusal of the Orthodox Church to bury him in the Christian ritual. The suicide is denied forgiveness and the right to a "Christian end". The film attempts to analyse the conservative position of the Church in this matter.

A young Romanian was killed by the gyp­sies in 1993, in the Transylvanian village Hădăreni during a fight between Romanians and Roma, while he was trying to protect his father from being beaten. The Romanian population reacted promptly: they lynched some gypsies and set several Roma households on fire. The case is brought to court four years later. Only a few days before the trial, some of the peo­ple involved in the conflict talk in front of the camera about what they feel and how the dreadful events have changed their lives.

A community of over 1,800 gypsyes live in the outskirts of the small town Bocşa, not far from Timişoara. They do not speak the gypsy language anymore. These people have lost their ethnic identity. There are many children in the community, adults are unemployed and everybody is strug­gling to survive from day to day on nettles, wild fruit and mushrooms they can find in the forest.

In the Moldavian village Vorona, there is an old custom called "the horses". A group of young men go from house to house on New Year's Eve and perform a traditional dance. They have to prepare themselves for the event, learn their parts and rehearse the songs. But the villagers do not show much interest in the performance, the City Hall makes them pay a fee and the other youngsters make fun of them, preferring the disco.  Under the circumstances, it is unlikely that they will carry on the tradition in the coming years.