Category: News

If you recognize yourself as:
►keen on cinema
► wanting to acquire knowledge concerning filmmaking
►eager to learn how to raise the value of your ideas
►able to thrive in an academic environment where you can develop your research skills
►constantly developing your creativity,

we’d like to welcome you in the Screenwriting-Film Studies Department, to a profile that matches your interests.

– At our Screenwriting-Film Studies BA program (literally translated Audiovisual communication: screenwriting, film studies, advertising, media), you’ll be introduced to screenwriting, film history, film theory. You’ll learn through our entire range of courses to understand cinema traditions.

Admission Calendar

Screenwriting-Film Studies BA: September 5-10

Application period: September 1 – 3

Mandatory online registration: July 16 – September 3 here

Examination of international students: September 3

– At our two MA programmes you’ll be able to get focused on what you want: Screenwriting or Film Studies.

We are open to candidates with (very) different academic backgrounds, whose strength is their enthusiasm regarding cinema and culture.

Graduate Admission Calendar

Screenwriting MA: September 12-14

Film Studies MA: September 12

Application: September 9-10

Mandatory online registration: July 16 – September 10 here

Beyond Netflix and HBO Go, which are the most popular streaming platforms in Romania, there are multiple possibilities of watching films online, and the pandemic lockdown that led to cinemas closing down has catalized an even greater array of daring, demanding films, for anyone willing to watch them in a browser.

You may remain skeptical to hyped events such as We Are One, which samples the programming of Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Annecy, Sundance etc. to raise COVID relief funds and keep the brands alive. However, there are several platforms that are more modestly promoted but consistent and perfectly suited for cinephile delight:

MUBI

Probably the most active and diverse arthouse platform, it makes available to its subscribers one rare film per day, while another one leaves the platform. Recently, MUBI made some of their “expired” film groupings available through their library.

CINEPUB

Given that the greatest enemy of Romanian films is the frailty of their distribution, CINEPUB is a trustworthy ally. Romanian films, new and classic, shorts and features, freely available on YouTube.

National Film Board of Canada

Animations, music documentaries and interviews with industry veterans are some of the highlits of the NFB platform. Through the multiple categorized lists, staff recommendations and most widely seen  selection, the NFB site is a model of digital archiving.

Le Cinéma Club

A VOD platform with an impressive history, to say the least – Gus van Sant, Jerome Hill, Benny Safdie, D.A. Pennebaker, Jonas Mekas, Claire Denis. One free film per week and unmissable editorial content. Where do David Perlov and John Huston meet? Apparently in Nadav Lapid’s personal canon.

The restrictions imposed by the pandemic took us all by surprise – the university shut down at noon on a Monday, so that the classes programmed in the morning took place, but those in the afternoon did not. However, since we prioritize everybody’s safety – the professors’, the students’, not to mention the technical staff who helps us out when we get lost in a yarn ball of cables –, we tried to reorganize as well as possible for going online.

First of all, we are grateful to blind chance that Sars-COV2 didn’t make an appearance until 2019, when downloading two-hour-long audiovisual files only takes a few minutes. Part of the infrastructure was already there, given that for several years we keep in touch with students by email to inform them of their weekly workload in an organized way. Also, several of us in the department use Classroom to keep each semester’s bibliography and filmography in good order. (As a bonus, UNATC benefits from a partnership with Google that offers unlimited online storage. Plus MUBI subscriptions for staff as well as students.) Basically, the biggest change was that before class, rather than picking up the key to the classroom, we generated a Zoom link.

Moreover, we think that in Screenwriting/Film Studies the students’ preparation is more lockdown-friendly than the routine of other profiles. Like in the “What I really do” memes, being a screenwriter, script doctor, film critic or scholar means spending a lot of time with text editing software. Many flu seasons have passed us by, and only rarely did we have to miss classes.

Did it feel the same to immerse ourselves in the history and practice of cinema in the middle of a deadly pandemic? Of course not. We had all the motivation to stay indoors, and yet the pages didn’t turn (or scroll) by themselves. The time we once wasted going to school gradually turned into a cherished memory. As did queuing for endless minutes in front of the cinema. But as it is, one full semester went by and we’re good and healthy.

The university library has reopened for lending books after the lockdown. If you’re inclined to spending your social distancing time reading, we have a few film-related recommendations below that you can find on the library shelves. While the library space is still closed until fall, students and university employees can check out books on their library card.

It is important to know that you can look up titles in the online catalogue and that they are not limited to periodicals and Film Studies books but include classic film scripts edited as volumes or memoirs of notable filmmakers.

Red Velvet Seat is an archaeological endeavor meant to uncover and contextualized writings on cinema from the first half of the 20th century belonging to women – by authors as varied as “Virginia Woolf, Colette, Rebecca West, psychoanalysts, poets, social reformers, labor organizers, film editors, screen beauties, and race activists”. Despite Jean-Luc Godard’s adage that cinematic art is the history of men filming women, it seems that this perspective stems from an archiving problem and that things are, in fact, more complex.

If you’ve ever seen a Stan Brakhage film, you probably didn’t assume that there is anyone who might unequivocally explain him. Whether that is true or not, Sitney got as close as possible. Submitting the masterpieces of the American avant-garde film to style analysis and interpretation, the monumentally important (and hefty) volume will make you wonder why you did not immerse yourself deeper, as well as sooner, in the heterogeneous ocean of non-narrative cinema.

Press attaché turned critic and filmmaker, Bertrand Tavernier established himself as a cinephile and stuck to the label throughout his long career. Without faithfully adhering to the principles of French auteurists who espoused Hollywood cinema for hiding, among the ranks of entertainment, genuine works of art, Tavernier nonetheless has the same openness toward studio-produced film. Whether the directors highlighted by Tavernier are among the auteurists’ idols (Jacques Tourneur, John Ford, Edgar Ulmer) or he pushes against the auteurist pantheon to support them (it is the case of John Huston and Elia Kazan, for example, who never earned a good name in Cahiers du Cinéma), the curatorial attention bestowed upon them is priceless.