Pintilie-films and censorship or How an author is born and a national film school dies
Filmele-Pintilie și cenzura sau despre cum se naște un autor și moare o școală națională de cinema Les films-Pintilie et la censure ou sur la naissance d'un auteur et la mort d'une école nationale de cinéma
Résumé
Lucian Pintilie starteded his career in the 60’s as a stage and film director but he made only four films in three decades of Communism, from wich one abroad. His talent has been unanimously acclaimed from the very beginning but he faced numerous censorship problems in his activity, both in theater and cinema. By focusing on the stenograph transcriptions of film debates, found in the production files at the Romanian National Film Archive, this article wishes to emphasise the way cineastes and bureaucrats take part at the censorship process through discussions that aim to fix the meaning of a film. These concern, more precisely, the debut film of Pintilie, Sunday at Six and about the last one made in Romania before the end of the Communist regime, Why Are the Bells Ringing, Mitica ?. Their analysis shows that the artistic judgements are informed by different ressources such as personal affinities, prestige, institutional background or different artistic views and that these have an impact on a film destiny. From this perspective, censorship appears to be much more contigent then would let belive an analysis focusing on a institutional or cultural politics’ level. The documents are also revealing that the attitude of the filmmaker towards the cinematographic authorities becomes gradually more radical. The scandals he generates by trying to defend his artistic views are relevealing the week degree of autonomy of artistic judgements and the rigidity of the conception about how should Romanian cinema look like. The analysis of Pintile’s case allows us to draw also on the idea of autheurship, which proove to be highly problematic in a Communist regime
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