Stejarii Verzi – Green Oaks

Stejarii Verzi (Green Oaks) is a 2003 short directed by Swiss/Romanian Ruxandra Zenide.  It is set in an orphanage in rural Romania called Green Oaks which is under-resourced but has a relaxed atmosphere.  George, aged about 10 or 11, is not a model pupil but he is fiercely loyal to his 5-year old sister Gabi.  However, one day an affluent Swiss couple arrive to adopt her.  To their surprise they learn that she is not eligible for adoption due to the government policy of not splitting siblings, but she and George have different fathers hence different surnames, and this has led to the bureaucratic mistake in Bucharest.

The couple are offered another child but complain it would mean a two-year wait while the application was processed, and as they have driven halfway across Europe they are keen to take Gabi, for whom they have the correct paperwork, even if it means splitting up the children.  To circumvent the ‘no sibling’ rule they are prepared to bribe the director, and he is willing to oblige.  Getting wind of the scheme from a staff member who does not want to be party to the agreement, even if complying means enough money for her to leave, George takes Gabi at night into the woods.  Not trusting the director to do the right thing, his plan is to go to Bucharest to tell the government they have made a mistake. 

However, in the cold weather and a long way from the railway station, he realises his plan is unfeasible.  After they have spent the night in a rough shelter where Gabi has become fractious, he secretly returns to the orphanage.  He is persuaded by the sympathetic staff member to take the Swiss woman, who has been having qualms about splitting the pair up, into the woods where he retrieves Gabi.  The woman smilingly watches his tenderness towards her.  However, the final scene shows George watching the car drive away, bearing Gabi off to a better life in Switzerland.

It is a desperately sad conclusion, but a predictable one.  The Swiss couple would not want George as he is too old and less easily moulded, and although they are aware Gabi will remember her brother, they are prepared to put their own interests first.  She becomes a commodity they and the director are willing to trade.  As for George, you wonder what life has in store for him, with his far fewer prospects.  Having the maturity to realise his sister would have more opportunities in Switzerland, he is being unselfish, yet it would be surprising if there was not some envy mixed with the dejection at their separation.  The viewer is left hoping that one day the two will be reunited.

The documentary is available from Cinepub on YouTube, with English-language subtitles.  Cinepub’s page on the film, with a link, is here:

https://cinepub.ro/movie/stejarii-verzi/

Cartea Soldatului – The Soldier’s Book

The Soldier’s Book (Cartea Soldatului) is a short 2018 documentary directed by Marius Donici and Doina Rusti.  It uses the find of a novel, the margins of which had been used as a notebook by a soldier during the First World War, to tell the story of the annotator, insofar as it can be pieced together from the clues provided by the notes.

The volume was found under a shed where it sat alongside other documents.  It is the Romanian translation of a romantic novel, Jean d'Agrève (1898), by the French writer Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé.  The notes had possibly been written by a Ştefan Anghelescu, but using the nom-de-plume Fănică.

The film is presented in a bitty manner, using a mix of talking heads, photographs and actors, interweaving Fănică’s story with Romania’s changing fortunes during the Great War.  It was a time of peril, but one that ultimately forged the nation. The evidence provided by Fănică’s jottings is supplemented by archival research to build a picture of a seminal moment in Romanian history.

There was a low literacy rate in Romania at the time so Fănică’s ability to read and write was fairly unusual in a working man.  An army reservist, he was a mechanic on the railway in peacetime so possessing skills highly sought after in the army, meaning he did not serve on the front line.  He was also a painter and a traveller, and there are hints he was gregarious.

The last is suggested by the many names, of men and women but mostly women, which feature in his notes, some of whom can be identified from historical records.  One in particular, Ana, probably Ana Simionescu, is prominent, and Fănică addresses her directly; but there are names of about 40 other women.  The precise nature of his relationship with them is unclear.

Romania was hard-pressed by the Central Powers, on both north and south borders, and after initial successes suffered reverses, not aided by the Russian retreat, which knocked it out of the war until (literally) the day before the Armistice.  Fănică was possibly taken prisoner at the Battle of Mărășești in September 1917 and held at Severin.

His final entry was made in early June 1918 and what happened to him afterwards is unclear.  However, one of the interviewees recounts discovering a landscape painting recently in a second-hand bookshop, dated 1920 and signed S. Anghelescu.  Perhaps it was the same Fănică, having survived the hostilities and returned to his old life.  One would like to think so.  Ana, with whom he seems to have fallen out, disappears from history, with no record of either marriage or death.

At only 35 minutes the film feels overly compressed, jumping from commentator to commentator, graphics flashing by, with scarcely a chance to absorb the information.  Despite having the course of Romania’s war sketched in by a series of academics, it helps to have some prior knowledge of this theatre of the conflict and Romania’s role within it.

However, the film does compile a personal story of sorts from the fragments, one that could so easily have been lost in the crumbling pages of a forgotten novel deteriorating under a shed.  In disinterring Fănică’s notes, the filmmakers have also performed a useful service in highlighting a part of the First World War that has tended to be overlooked.

The documentary is available from Cinepub on YouTube, with English-language subtitles.  Cinepub’s page on the film, with a link, is here:

https://cinepub.ro/movie/cartea-soldatului/

The Cold War: A New Oral History, by Bridget Kendall

Bridget Kendall’s 2017 oral history is clustered around particular flashpoints worldwide in the Cold War (perhaps we should start calling it the First Cold War), from the Greek Civil War in 1944 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  The BBC publication was designed to accompany a radio series, The Cold War: Stories from the Big Freeze.  Kendall has gathered interviews with many people who experienced its various facets, and has produced a bottom-up history supplemented by short, and thus not very detailed, contextualising essays.

There are references to Romania, though its few appearances in passing indicate that in terms of the conflict it was fairly marginal, probably no bad thing.  The first is in the introductory essay to the Greek Civil War chapter, which outlines the ‘Percentages Agreement’ reached between Churchill and Stalin in October 1944.  This was designed to split Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, as if this could be hammered out over a conference table.  Romania was to be 90% in the Soviet sphere and 10% in the British; not quite how it turned out.

The introduction to the chapter on the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, described as an early example of what we now call hybrid warfare, refers to the ‘liberation’ (quotes in original) of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary in 1943-4.  It demonstrated the pointlessness of haggling over percentages but the reality of the Soviet sphere of influence.  Russia wanted pro-Moscow buffer states, and the occupation by the Red Army facilitated the installation of subservient regimes in those countries.

The next reference is in the introduction to the chapter on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which talks about Soviet political and economic control over client states.  East Germany, Romania and Hungary were obliged to pay ‘draconian’ war reparations, and to finance Soviet troops stationed locally.

Jump forward to Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the introduction dealing with the crushing of the Prague Spring.  Nicolae Ceaușescu, who had sided with Alexander Dubček (surprising to us now, but Ceaușescu, only three years in power, was trying to keep his own distance from Moscow), to his credit refused to supply troops to assist in occupying Czechoslovakia.  Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria acquiesced.

We have to wait for the chapter on Chile in 1973 before Romania is mentioned by one of the eyewitnesses, actually the only occasion.  Osvaldo Puccio was imprisoned by the Pinochet regime, expelled, and went into exile in Romania in 1974 before moving to Germany.  He does not say anything about Romania, nor why he initially settled there, and he was back in Chile a decade after leaving.

In the introduction to the chapter on the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002), Romania is mentioned as one of the countries ‘pitching into the fracas to back their preferred sides.’  I had to look elsewhere to establish that Romania, among many others, supported the MPLA.

The introduction to the chapter devoted to ‘Gorbachev’s Perestroika’ (1985-91) refers to his communication to Communist leaders in the Eastern European states that they could no longer rely on the Soviet Union to keep them in power.  As those parties enjoyed little real public support, the governments were vulnerable to popular dissent.  Hence, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the movement to unseat Communist governments began, largely peacefully, though Ceaușescu’s overthrow was more violent.

Romanian Literature Now

Romania Literature Now is not a demand by me (though it could be!) but the name of an English-language website devoted to, as its name suggests, recent developments in Romanian literature.  Edited by Cezar Gheorghe and Emanuela Ignățoiu-Sora, it is subtitled ‘Everything you need to know about Romanian literature’, which is a fine aspiration, and in time the site promises to become a key hub of information on the subject.  It is devoted to writers at all stages of their careers, and showcases a thriving literary scene in Romania.

As today is World Writers’ Day, a sadly under-celebrated event, Romanian Literature Now on Facebook is promoting the website’s pages devoted to Romanian authors; these provide biographical information and translated tasters of their output.  Some pages include videos of readings and interviews, though they are in Romanian.  Mircea Cărtărescu’s naturally is extensive, with a bibliography and external links.

The editors would like to have more excerpts from a range of writers translated into English and made freely available on the website.  To this end they have recently set up a Patreon page, collecting donations both to help promote Romanian writers generally and to finance translations.  As print editions of Romanian authors tend to be issued by small-scale publishers in short runs they are quite expensive and not easy to get hold of, so this is a welcome initiative and worthy of support.

Romanian Literature Now’s website can be found here:

http://www.romanianliteraturenow.com/

The Patreon donation link:

https://www.patreon.com/romanianliteraturenow?fbclid=IwAR2clLhk9BK-QleGDpvybt83_dOWyXJjQi7cD_a5mhuHvgWYHjE7j7xW-90

In Limbo: Brexit Testimonies from EU Citizens in the UK, by Elena Remigi et al (eds.)

The aptly titled In Limbo: Brexit Testimonies from EU Citizens in the UK, by Elena Remigi, Véronique Martin, and Tim Sykes (eds.), is a 2017 compilation of responses by EU citizens living in the UK to the Brexit vote, and very sad and moving reading it makes.  The entire Brexit shambles is embarrassing for the UK anyway, but Remigi and her colleagues have outlined its human cost.  These are perspectives Brexiteers ignore, and probably don’t care about, but they need to be heard.

Since the vote, the UK’s stock in the world has diminished: it has been shown to be run by an incompetent government more concerned with keeping the Tory Party together than about the country, a country which is xenophobic, arrogant, small-minded, full of poorly educated people who do not have a clue about how the modern world works, and possessing contempt for what it sees as ‘the other’.  Who can blame outsiders for seeing us this way when many Britons do?

The foreword by George Szirtes mentions a leave voter saying he wanted to prevent all illegal immigration, as if it were synonymous with EU freedom of movement and would stop with Britain leaving the EU.  Many people believed the malicious propaganda, and still do, not realising how critical the role played by EU nationals in the UK economy.  They surely will, when it is too late.  In the meantime, this book shows the human cost, and anybody who is not concerned by that should be ashamed.

In Limbo is full of testimonies of hard-working people who have made a significant contribution to this country.  It is not totally representative, because it is drawn from accounts posted online, excluding many people.  Others were afraid to participate because they feared repercussions (which says something in itself) and also unrepresented are those involved in low-skilled work who perhaps have poor English skills.  Naturally I checked to see if there were any Romanian entries, and found three.

Nicoleta (pp. 27-8) came to the UK as a ‘highly skilled migrant worker’ before the UK labour market was open to Romanians, and had to obtain a visa waiver after being headhunted.  She had previously worked in the USA and South-East Asia, resulting in her being highly skilled at no cost to the British taxpayer.  Her assumption that her identity as eastern European would indicate someone strong who had prospered despite growing up in a repressive regime was shattered when Romanians and Bulgarians were characterised to her as an ‘invasion’ of ‘third world Europeans,’ despite her significant contribution to this country.  She has too many friends to quit the UK, and is going to fight, because she feels ‘the Europeans, East and West, share a dream with the 48% [of Britons who voted remain] that is worth fighting for.’

Teordor Lingurar (p. 144) had been living in the UK for ten years but still found it difficult to gain permanent residence, his application having been turned down twice despite providing evidence of National Insurance for that period.  ‘The reason given to me by the Home Office was that they could not establish that I was residing in the UK.’  It is perhaps more cock-up than conspiracy, but shameful either way.

Diana Wright (pp. 171-3) grew up during the Communist period, in difficult times for the country and in straitened circumstances for her family.  Aged 13 in 1989, the UK government’s ‘authoritarian approach to Brexit’ has caused her to think back to her childhood memories.  She achieved a post-graduate education, and when moving to the UK created her own job, rather than ‘stealing’ it from a British citizen.  She has a British husband who loves Romania and they lived there for six years.  They moved back for their daughter’s education, but found the system wanting and home-schooled her.  Diana is upbeat, because there are other places to live in the EU, not least Romania itself, with a good standard of living and protected by EU standards.

Those behind the book run a blog, https://www.inlimboproject.org/, which continues to collect testimonies and highlight the problems and uncertainties EU citizens in the UK face.  What an indictment of this country as supposedly civilised and outward-looking.  In 2018, Remigi and colleagues published a follow-up, In Limbo Too: Brexit Testimonies from UK Citizens in the EU, a less-well publicised part of the fiasco.

198: How I Ran Out of Countries*, by Gunnar Garfors

Gunnar Garfors made a bet he would visit all 198 (at the time, by his calculation) countries in the world by the age of 40, and his 2014 book (English translation 2015) is a sketchy diary of his trips.  He states near the beginning that he abhors travel guides because they ‘reduce creativity and destroy impulsiveness.’  Rather, he wants to arrive with an open mind and find out from locals what is worth doing.  It is one strategy, though the traveller risks missing out on activities a guide covers but an informant doesn’t mention.  In Garfors' case it hardly matters because he has so little interest in the places he passes through in pursuit of his goal.

Romania has a page (pp. 159-160) in a section mainly devoted to culinary experiences.  It begins with a flimsy descriptive whirl that takes in the heaviness of the Palace of the Parliament; Ceaușescu; Timișoara, where the 1989 revolution started and where years later Garfors met a local named Flory, upon whom the revolution had made an impression though she was only a child; Flory lives in Sibiu, ‘not far from Transylvania’, Garfors not realising Sibiu is in Transylvania (cue Dracula reference anyway); a sentence on the plot of Stoker’s novel; hey, there was a real Dracula, ‘Vlad III Dracula’, who killed a lot of people ‘thereby earning the moniker Vlad the Impaler.’

Flory is not keen on the Dracula link, unsurprisingly, though appreciative of the tourism it brings.  However, ‘People should come to Transylvania for the beauty, not the beast,’ as she puts it, and Garfors agrees, though he still feels the mystique of the area is due to Stoker.  Garfors goes to Sibiu where he has a meal with Flory and her Polish boyfriend.  Flory is enthusiastic about the local cuisine, causing Garfors and the boyfriend to poke fun at her claim that all the dishes are ‘famous’.  Then the trio sample the nightlife, though the music is loud.  Romania, Garfors opines, is like most Eastern European countries in that the girls dress ‘extremely sexily’ to be noticed, which Flory accomplishes with style.  Then he leaves her and her boyfriend as the music is too loud.  Next entry: Dominica for half a page.

Garfors states he has not written a guidebook, something ten seconds browsing would have made clear anyway.  This reader was left puzzling about the point of what he has written, apart from the implicit invitation to express wonder at his achievements, because as travel writing it is singularly valueless.  And the Romania entry is not unique: he manages an entry on Russia remarkably saying nothing about Russia, it is all about him driving nice cars while on conference jollies.  On this evidence, Gunnar would have been well advised to invest in travel guides to use as a jumping-off point for his own explorations.  Then we could perhaps have heard more about what he found and less about his ego.

*The asterisk in the subtitle refers to a note on the title page: ‘By Visiting Random People on Incredible Travels to Every Country in the Whole Wide World’ (capitalised in the original).  Random sums it up nicely, and we could agree on incredible as well, though not in the sense intended by Garfors.

Romanian hyperpedestrians

Paul Pârvu, Gheorghe Negreanu, Alexandru Pascu şi Dumitru Dan

Fortean Times 376 (February 2019) carries an edited extract from Jan Bondeson’s book The Lion Boy and Other Medical Curiosities.  The article deals with hyperpedestrians: these are mostly men who walk extremely long distances, including round the world.  There was a craze for this occupation around the turn of the twentieth century, but it was killed off by the First World War.  Naturally it was an unregulated field, with non-standardised routes and often unverifiable claims.

The major hyperpedestrian Bondeson covers is German-American George M Schilling, but he includes a variety of others, including four Romanians who set off to walk round the world.  These were Dumitru Dan (often spelled Demetre Dann in newspapers), Gheorghe Negreanu, Paul Pîrvu (or Pârvu) and Alexandru Pascu.  The four were students in Paris in 1908 when the Touring Club de France announced a contest, with 100,000 francs (one for every kilometre covered) offered to the first person who walked round the world.  Bondeson’s FT article gives a brief account of their journey, but there is plenty of Romanian-language material available on the quartet.

The intrepid Romanians decided to enter the contest and returned to Romania to prepare.  They learned folk songs and to play instruments so they could support themselves, not being allowed to receive external funding during the journey, and between them had a good spread of languages.  In 1910, wearing traditional costume and accompanied by Harap the dog (it seems virtually all hyperpedestrians took dogs), they set out on their circumnavigation.  There were about 200 competitors in all, but the four do not seem to have been unduly worried about being beaten through starting late.

Much of the detail of the journey relies on later reminiscences by Dumitru Dan and cannot be independently verified.  He states that they plotted a route which appears eccentric but was designed to avoid wintery conditions as much as possible.  Even on board ship they kept walking, marching round the deck for up to 12 hours a day in all weathers, using a form of pedometer to record their mileage and asking the captain to verify the distance.

Unfortunately, the expedition was beset by tragedy.  In 1911 Alexandru Pascu died from opium poisoning after indulging with the Rajah of Bombay.  Gheorghe Negreanu died the following year after a fall navigating a mountain pass in China.  Paul Pîrvu made it to Florida but he had injured his legs and developed gangrene.  Dumitru Dan left him with Harap to recover but despite having both legs amputated, Pîrvu died in 1915.

So Dan was left on his own to continue, but it was not a good time to try to cross continental Europe and although he was back in Romania in 1916, he completed his epic journey only in 1923 when he walked from Bucharest to Paris.  He claimed the prize, though the amount was much reduced by inflation, having passed through 74 (or 76) countries while walking over 62,000 miles.  Dan had worn out 28 national costumes and nearly 500 pairs of traditional footwear.

Unsurprisingly Dan became a geography teacher, and in later years lectured extensively on his youthful travels.  He died in 1978, the sole survivor of a remarkable expedition, and is buried in the Heroes’ Cemetery at Buzău.  He has a very nice monument adorned by his bust and casts of part of a globe and a pair of opinci, and an inscription attesting to his role as an ambassador for Romania.

 

Update 7 November 2020:

Opinci/My Father’s Shoes (2019)

An 18-minute animated film about the expedition, Opinci/My Father’s Shoes, directed by Anton and Damian Groves (2019), was shown as part of the online 2020 Romania Rocks: Romanian-British Literature festival.  The film was introduced by Roger Bunyan, author of the book Against All Odds. The Stories of 25 Remarkable Adventurers, which includes a chapter on Dan.  He provided an overview of Dan’s and his companions’ endeavour.  Bunyan’s daughter lives in Bucharest, which gave him the opportunity to investigate the story.

It is a beautiful film, told by an older Dan to his young daughter Steliana, the story of the four friends related in flashback.  The pair live alone as they come to terms with the loss of Stelaina’s mother who died in childbirth, and the father-daughter relationship is touchingly conveyed.  Steliana was born in 1929, and the final moments cut from the animation to film of her being interviewed in old age.  The film is dedicated to her, the four companions, and Harap.  For a short film the impact is powerfully moving.

The screening was followed by a Q&A with the English directors Anton and Damian Groves, illustrators Maria and Ileana Surducan, plus Bunyan.  It was particularly interesting as it shed light on the animation process, real actors wearing large papier-mâché heads used as the basis for Dan and Steliana, cut into the animated scenes.  The undertaking was complex, and the end result took almost six years, but it was worth the effort.

The directors talked about the tone they achieved, making the film suitable for both children and adults despite dealing with themes of hardship and loss.  They ended with the hope that, like Dumitru Dan before it, the film will travel the world.

 

However…

In checking the claim that Dan had been included in the Guinness Book of World Records, I discovered an article from December 2019 which casts considerable doubt on the veracity of his story.  Blogger ‘Davy Crockett’ situates Dan’s global perambulation within a brief tradition of hoaxing in which fraudsters claimed to be in a competition organised by the Touring Club de France or similar organisations.

Crockett, who has done extensive research on hyperpedestrianism, notes that it is a field full of exaggeration.  He points out that the main source for Dan’s claim is an interview given late in life which the World Records organisation took on trust when including him in the 1978 edition, despite discrepancies with lectures he had given, certificates he had acquired, and what newspaper coverage exists.

He subjects Dan’s claim to extensive scrutiny and concludes that ‘most of his story was fiction,’ full of contradictions and falsehoods.  There was no competition, and the Touring Club de France’s focus was on cycling and latterly motoring, with no interest in pedestrianism.  The distances he said he had travelled were covered implausibly fast in the conditions of the time. (I have to say I had wondered where Dan and his companions sourced all those pairs of opinci as they travelled.)

Dan’s story changed over the years and there is convincing evidence, based on surviving records, that the trips to Africa, Australia, Central and South America, Asia and Alaska did not happen.  In fact he fought in the 1912-13 Balkan War and the following year was in various Western European countries.  There was no newspaper coverage of the alleged finish in Paris in 1923, surprising in itself for such a significant achievement, and which an organisation would be expected to milk for maximum publicity.

Thus, Pascu could not have overdosed on opium in India, nor Negreanu fallen off a cliff in China, because Dan was never in those countries.  Their involvement (and that of Harap), if any, remains murky despite the famous photograph of the quartet.  Pîrvu was actually a Hungarian living in Ohio who spent three months travelling with Dan in the midwestern United States, and he died in 1938.  Otherwise, evidence suggests Dan travelled alone.

While conceding we will never know for sure, Crockett estimates that Dan probably walked no more than 5,000 miles in Europe and North America, assuming he really walked between towns, for which there is no independent verification.  The analysis is compelling, and it is all rather sad to discover Dan was a fraud.

Presumably Roger Bunyan did not reach the same conclusion as Crockett when writing his book, or was too polite to mention any reservations during his introduction to Opinci and the subsequent Q&A, as he took the standard narrative at face value.  It seems the evidence was there all the time, but nobody (including the museum at Buzău, which spent a large sum developing a Dumitru Dan section) had bothered to look because it was a great yarn hearers wanted to be true.

 

Update 22 March 2023:

Despite Dan’s dubious claim, an exhibition dedicated to his feat (pun intended), Around the World on Foot: The Story of the 497 Pairs of Opinci, has just opened in the city of Ath, Belgium.  Marking the centenary of the conclusion of Dan’s tour, the exhibition, which runs from 18-31 March 2023, includes personal items, documents from the journey, and 20 images.  There will be lectures and a showing of the Groves’ film Opinci.

It is organised by the Brussels Romanian Cultural Institute, Buzău County Museum, Buzău County Council, the RoAth Association (‘connecting the Romanian cultural heritage with the inhabitants of the Ath region’), Wallonia City Hall and the Embassy of Romania in the Kingdom of Belgium.  The opening was attended by the Romanian ambassador, in addition to representatives of the participating associations.  So it is a pretty big deal.

Celebrating a Romanian hyperpedestrian in a provincial Belgian town may seem surprising.  The event has been mounted to mark International Francophonie Day, observed each year on 20 March to celebrate the French language.  A statement by the organisers provides the following rationale for the focus on Dan:

‘To mark the International Day of La Francophonie, ICR Brussels considers the project to be in line with the objectives of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie "to promote and protect the diversity of cultural expressions in the policy of supporting cultural heritage and artistic creation as a new form of human solidarity."

‘Also, “Around the World on Foot. The story of the 497 pairs of opinci" is a project designed to strengthen the ties between the two cultures, by (re)discovering and knowing the "other", paralleling the Romanian cultural past and values vis-à-vis the Belgian ones, in a city where folklore and traditions served as the starting point for a renewed campaign to promote them.’

One might deduce from the waffle that there was a certain amount of head-scratching to think up notable links between Romania and Belgium.  The reason given for the exhibition’s location in Ath is that according to the Buzău museum director, Daniel Costache, it is only 10-15 kilometres away from the point where Dan entered Belgium on 18 March 1914 en route to France.  As Dan received a transit paper, and there are other documents indicating his presence in the area, it is clear at least this part of his journey was genuine.

The publicity though recounts Dan’s claims uncritically and does not indicate that there are good grounds for scepticism, but as the Buzău museum is involved, and it is in their interest to promote Dan, it is hardly surprising.  If only his travelling companions had survived, we would have had independent corroboration that Dan is worthy of the exhibition and the accolades.

 

Bucharestless

Bucharestless (2011) is less a city symphony than a free-flowing jazz session, circling round the Romanian capital, picking elements here and there to build a kaleidoscopic picture of those everyday details that caught the filmmakers’ eyes.  Directed by George Dorobantu, the 93 minutes show aspects of Bucharest as organism, parts of which are barely noticed by those going about their business.  Unlike a chronologically-structured portrait we circle around, returning to scenes showing that while in some ways the city changes, in others it stays the same.

The title captures various forms of restlessness: Bucharest is a restless city, subject to changing light, weather and seasons, never the same from one moment to another.  The camera is restless as it pokes around.  The inhabitants it gazes at are restless as well.  This is not primarily about people though; in fact we rarely see faces.  Many of those shown are elderly, shuffling round with shopping bags, just getting by, but there are opportunities for leisure and play as well, and green spaces in which to relax.  Cats and stray dogs are plentiful, leading parallel lives.

Elements of architecture are included, but not primarily the touristy bits nor the new developments.  Mostly we see scruffy-looking apartment blocks, and even the more elegant buildings are often decaying.  When new buildings are shown, it is often at odd angles, or only as abstracts, suggesting an alienated view of the urban landscape.  As significant as the macro level is the micro level, nature keeping a toehold in an unpromising environment with ants and beetles flourishing among the detritus humans discard.  The overall shabbiness is a long way from the tourist board-favoured heritage view of the Paris of the East, but it is generally a vibrant shabbiness.

The film may seem artless, its makers merely strolling round with a digital camera, taking random shots and stitching them together, overlaid with a pleasant musical accompaniment.  And no doubt there was much walking about hoping for interesting things to turn up.  But there is structure (the film is divided into 16 sections though these are not obvious to the viewer) and some of the shots have been subjected to processing, moving away from the film as a slice of reality.  The result is immersive, a documentary that gets under the skin of the city, and in a hypnotic way gets under the skin of the viewer too.  But whether an emphasis on the tiredness of the infrastructure is a fair reflection of reality can only be judged by Bucharest’s inhabitants.

The film is available through Cinepub on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2RlZRZWCW8

In Other Lands: The Balkans (1920)

Produced by the Post Pictures Corporation of New York, this is a 15-minute documentary about the Balkans.  Title cards inform the viewer where the Balkans are, and which countries it comprises: Jugo-Slavia (sic), Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Turkey and Roumania (though it adds the last is not properly part of the peninsula).  It then goes on to list the ethnic diversity of the region.

After these preliminaries the film shows footage of some of the peoples of the region before noting how the different groups have often been in conflict with each other.  Then there are some generic views of a market followed by footage shot in various of the regions: Greece, Jugo-Slavia, Montenegro, Dalmatia, and Turks drinking tea in the street.

Then we get to Romania (7:36) for literally two shots, introduced by a title card – ‘Roumanian peasants, the only reliable and trustworthy class in their country’ (if it is any consolation the film is even ruder about the Turks).  In the first shot, an elderly man walks slowly through a gate, fastens it, picks up a pitchfork and walks out of shot.  In the second, two men stand and look at the camera while women and men sit in the background.

Then it is back to generic Balkan markets, Greek Orthodox priests, newspaper reading while on a pitifully small donkey in Athens, Bulgaria, Belgrade, and scenes that are merely labelled ‘Balkan’ and could be anywhere, concluding with the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria.  Much of the film comprises people standing or sitting while being filmed staring at the camera, in takes longer than necessary.

The film can be found on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJRfU5fPyvg&t=479s

Roumania Roumania, by Aaron Lebedeff

When I first heard Roumania Roumania, without reading a translation and knowing nothing of its composer, I thought it wonderfully upbeat and it made me smile, then it became an earworm.  It was written and composed by Aaron Lebedeff, sometimes Lebedoff (1873–1960), who was born in Belarus and became a notable stage performer.  He was witness to dark days for European Jewry, although after some peripatetic years learning his craft he had the good fortune to arrive in New York in 1920, where he achieved considerable success.

Roumania Roumania was originally released in 1925 though Lebedeff made a further version in 1941 and another in 1947.  It was his most popular song.  Looking into it a little more though after I read an English translation of the Yiddish, I started to think it might not be quite the sunny song it appears on the surface.   It seems to play on clichés of fun-loving Romanian Jews eating and making merry, but there is an edge provided by the history of Jewish persecution in Europe.  Here are the words; I cannot vouch for the strict accuracy of the translation but the sense is clear:

Oh! Roumania, Roumania, Roumania …

 Once there was a land, sweet and lovely.

 Oh! Roumania, Roumania, Roumania …

 Once there was a land, sweet and fine.

 To live there is a pleasure;

 What your heart desires you can get;

 A mămăligă, a pastrami, a karnatzl,

 And a glass of wine, aha … !

Ay, in Roumania life is so good;

 No one knows of care;

 Everywhere they’re drinking wine -

 And having a bite of kashtaval.

 Hay, digadi dam …

Ay, in Roumania life is so good;

 No one knows of worry.

 They drink wine, though it’s late;

 And have a bite of kastrovet.

 Hay, digadi dam …

Oh, my, help, I’m going crazy!

 I care only for brinze and mămăligă

 I dance and jump up to the ceiling

 When I eat a patlazhele.

 Dzing ma, tay yidldi tam …

 What a pleasure, what could be better!

 Oh, the only delight is Roumanian wine.

Roumanians drink wine

 And eat mămăligă;

 And he who kisses his own wife,

 Is the one who’s crazy.

 Zets, dzing ma, tay yidl di tam …

“May salvation come from heaven … “

 Stop and kiss the cook, Khaye,

 Dressed in rags and tatters;

 She makes a pudding for the Sabbath.

 Zets! Tay ti didl di tam …

Moyshe Khayim comes along

 And takes away the best part;

 Moyshe Khayim, Borukh Shmil –

 Tickle her on the sly.

 Zets! Tay tidl di tam …

And the girl pouts, alas,

 Seems unwilling, but allows it.

 Tshu!

It’s good to kiss a lass

 When she’s sweet sixteen;

 When one kisses an old maid,

 She begins to grumble.

 Zets! Tay yidl di dam …

 What a pleasure, what could be better!

 Oh, the only delight is Roumanian wine.

As depicted here, Romania is a never-never land, sweet, lovely, fine: a Garden of Eden in fact, where good food and drink flow and there are no cares.  The song gets faster as we imagine the singer becoming more and more drunk, spouting gibberish and getting frisky, kissing any lady – even the ragged cook will do, though a young girl is better – who comes into his orbit, apart from his wife, and jumping higher and higher in his exuberance.  And when the kissing is done, there is still wine.

The carefree image contrasts with the real situation in Europe, and while there may well be an element of nostalgia, there is a greater one of irony, because Jewish life in the region was never at any time as sunny as painted here and only got worse as the century progressed.  Even though Lebedeff was in New York, he could understand the anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe during the 1920s and 30s, and by the time he recorded the 1941 version, the laughter would have turned to anger, the ‘life is so good’ aspect taken on a sarcastic slant.  Now, with the horrors receding beyond memory into history, we can again laugh at those crazy times in old Roumania, where fun was the order of the day; as long as we do not forget the reality.

But why Romania, when Lebedeff was not from those parts?  Perhaps, though unlikely, it was on his mind when he wrote it in the mid-1920s because of the formation of Greater Romania in the period after the First World War; perhaps it was simply because the four syllables of ‘Roumania’ suited the rhythm of the song; perhaps it expressed a patronising attitude by urban Jews to their country cousins, or to Romanian Jews in particular who were seen as unsophisticated; perhaps there was a genuinely affectionate feeling that Romanian Jews had fun.  What seems uncomplicated lightheartedness shows on closer inspection that it is not quite as straightforward as one might assume.  No matter, it is a classic.

There are many, many versions of Roumania Roumania on YouTube, some of which are too reverent to do the song justice.  The following list is far from exhaustive.

Those by Lebedeff, remain the gold standard by which the others must be measured:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Pkq72HodA

The Barry Sisters are sedate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REoxY-iyVPU

Joel Grey has a nicely bouncy take with a punchy delivery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI5nuLELfb8

The Jewish Monkeys exaggerate the manic aspect, not entirely successfully:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa66GNZ4r2I

Cathy Berberian tries too hard to be kooky:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty0pJL-Uc5Y

Eartha Kitt is typically sultry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_F_clNKPNQ

Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra did an instrumental version in 1961, which rather defeats the point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQbxr5A2v8c

The Sirba Octet also perform an instrumental version, but it is brisk and energetic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBQGVthco6M

The Klezmer Conservatory Band captures the humour well and Judy Bressler’s singing is so pitch-perfect this is probably my favourite, apart from Lebedeff’s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K74sXKKus1w