Faced with the respective recognitions garnered by filmmakers such as Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, or even Radu Muntean, Radu Jude’s first steps were taken while operating within the confines of the international stage.
Although common ideas and connections could be traced between the filmmakers, the works of each of them follow an irregular orbit. In Jude’s case, the abyss is accentuated, given that the recent Berlin Golden Bear winner is manifestly more multi-faceted than other filmmakers who maintain an aesthetic pattern throughout their careers. His experimentation with forms (which can even be extrapolated to the film unit) and his researcher profile create a puzzle that make it difficult to define a single image that might synthesise his work.
A symbol of his restless spirit is his arrival at Tabakalera, where he completed a four-week residency within the context of the ‘Filmmakers in Residence” initiative at the Elías Querejeta Film School, a programme that brings together support for guest creator projects and the creation of a space for theoretical and practical exchange with the centre’s student body.
Throughout his stay, Radu Jude shared with students about progress on his new film to be shot mid-year, organised a seminar around the dilemmas film comes up against when it addresses questions of historical memory, and proposed a development initiative for various short-subject pieces based on adaptations of texts from Thomas Bernhard and Anton Chekhov.
In turn, his first and last works could be seen on Tabakalera’s shared screen through the San Sebastian International Film Festival + PLUS and Spoken Film cycles, which is an initiative of Tabakalera’s audiovisual programme where guest filmmakers discuss their creative processes in the cinema itself. This is how he has completed the journey from his beginnings to his most recent success, demonstrating his skilled portraits of national history, playful games that match the past with the present and vice versa, connecting modern-day Romania with episodes from the past that the official line would rather hide.
In a conversation with him before the presentation of his début feature Cea mai fericită fată din lume (The Happiest Girl in the World), a neo-realist pseudo-drama of the post-Ceaușescu era, he told me that he had long had the sensation of living through things twice, which caused him episodes of weariness and disillusionment. Perhaps this resistance to conformism and the routine is the essence of the infinite forms that his zigzagging film hides. That which leaves no room for a single definition.
Irati Crespo
