Professors

Lucian Georgescu Professor

Profesor

Dr. Lucian Georgescu is Professor in Film and Media at UNATC, the Senior of the Screenwriting Dept. whose curricula he fundamentally reshaped in the last decade. He is a member of the University Scientific Editorial Board, Screenwriters Research Network (SRN) Executive Council member, FIPRESCI, EACWP, UCIN (Romanian Film Critics Association), and Creative Commons.

His research focuses on the narrative paradigms of the road movie genre and its sociological implications, the application of the open-source concept in cinema distribution, the development of the streaming industry, its cinematic, and societal impact.

An early film critic in postcommunist Romania (Noul Cinema, 1992), has authored numerous articles and studies, in outlets including Noul Cinema, Pro Cinema, Romania Literara, Literatorul, Media and Advertising, Polirom, Telerama-Corlet, Intellect, Taylor & Francis, Edinburgh University Press.

He published “Pe drum cu Jim”, a monograph of Jarmusch, and “Dialoguri despre scenariu”, a compilation of academic conversations with Professor Carabăț, his mentor and founder of the Romanian screenwriting school. Some of his essays are internationally available, such as “The Road Movies of the New Romanian Cinema” (in ”Studies in Eastern European Cinema”, Francis and Taylor, 2012), “The New Romanian Cinema at the Point of No Return” (in ”East, West, and Centre: Reframing Post-1989 European Cinema” – EUP, 2015), and “Narratives on Entertainment Streaming in Europe” (co-edited with Constantin Parvulescu, Journal of Digital Media and Policy, forthcoming, 2024). His editorial contributions and translations in Romanian include the seminal work of Steven Maras, “Screenplay – History, Theory and Practice” (Columbia University / Polirom – 2023), Barry Gifford’s ”The Phantom Father” (Crane Hill / balkanski, 2013) and Frédéric Beigbeder’s ”99 Francs” (Pandora M, 2004).

A veteran of the Romanian audiovisual industry, and of the national cultural marketing movement, an internationally awarded creative director and filmmaker, he is the founder and president of cinepub.ro, a unique, curated, AVOD platform for independent cinema. His role as Guest Editor for Intellect, Journal of Digital Media and Policy (2024) exemplifies how his career has seamlessly integrated academic research with practical knowledge from cinema, media, and advertising.

Courses: Screenwriting, Advertising, Dissertation thesis supervision

Tudor Voican Associate Professor

Tudor Voican studied screenwriting and film theory at undergrad, graduate and PhD level at UNATC and holds an MFA Screenwriting from York University, Canada.The recipient of three Gopo awards, Tudor is the screenwriter of movies such Bless you, prison, California Dreamin’, Marilena from P7, Medal of honor, Outbound, Carmen.

 He is the initiator and the jury president of Wallachia Int’l Film Fest. He has authored several books: The screenplay: from myth to artificial intelligence, Communication sciences in the art of screenwriting and Medal of honor, an honored screenplay.

His research interests include narrative structures and antistructures, American cinema and the Romanian “waves”. Tudor is a gamer, a philatelist, a bridge player and an orchid lover.

Courses: Screenwriting, Dissertation Writing, Practice.

Ana Agopian Lecturer

Ana Agopian graduated from The National University of Film and Theater “I.L.Caragiale” and the European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA), Berlin. She has a PHD in literature (University of Bucharest). She has worked as a scriptwriter, together with Oana Răsuceanu and Iulia Rugină, for several short and medium length films (such as Hi Cristina! Bye Cristina, Stuck on Christmas. Dying From A Wound Of Love, Skugos) and three feature films – Love Building (2013), Another Love Building (2014) and Breaking News (2017).

Her most recent feature film, Breaking News, premiered at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Official Competition, winner of Special Jury Mention for actress Voica Oltean). The short E.T. was here is her debut film as a director.

As a scriptwriter she also collaborated with Media Pro Pictures and HBO Romania.

In 2019 she founded Control N Cultural Association and she is actively involved in the projects developed by the organization. Currently, she is a trainer for scriptwriting workshops (dedicated to professionals or non-professionals).

Since 2009 Ana teaches screenwriting at the The National University of Film and Theater “I.L.Caragiale”. Her research interests include: screenplay as literature form, script doctoring – methodologies in applying scriptwriting techniques.


Courses: Screenwriting, Collaborative Screenwriting, Writers-Directors

Andrei Gorzo Associate Professor

Andrei Gorzo studied film history and film theory at Bucharest’s National University of Theatre and Film (UNATC) and at New York University. He is currently an associate professor of Film Studies at the UNATC; he was recently a Fulbright visiting scholar at Stanford University (August 2017 to January 2018). He was the artistic director of the NexT International Film Festival for its first seven editions (2007-2013).

For the program Éducation à l’image (implemented by the NexT Cultural Society in a number of Romanian high schools), he has authored critical guides to Romanian film classics like Lucian Pintilie’s An Unforgettable Summer and Harun Farocki’s and Andrei Ujică’s Videograms of a Revolution. His most recent book is Viața, moartea și iar viața criticii de film (Iași: Polirom, 2019). His research interests include the New Romanian Cinema, the aesthetics of the long take, the thought of André Bazin, Cold War cinema, the life and writings of Graham Greene. 

Courses: Film Theory , Film Criticism & Analysis, The Film Canon: Debates and Revisions.

Andrei Rus Lecturer

Andrei Rus is a graduate of the National University of Theater and Cinematography „Ion Luca Caragiale” in Bucharest, where he now teaches Film Studies and Film History classes. He is the Artistic Director of One World Romania International Documentary and Human Rights Film Festival and twice a month he coordinates a Cineclub dedicated to documentaries. Between 2009 and 2015, he coordinated a film magazine (Film Menu) written by young students in the university and organized a Cineclub and other types of projections in the university’s film theater.

He used to be a member of the Administration Board of the Romanian National Center of Cinematography and, between 2015 and 2017 he was the Counsellor for Cinema of the Romanian Minister of Culture. Andrei is mainly interested in studying topics related to documentary and experimental filmmaking, but also in the restoration, the archival and the preservation of films.

Courses: Film History, Film Analysis and Criticism, Methods in Non-fictional Filmmaking, History of Documentary Film

Irina Trocan Lecturer

Lecturer at the National University of Theatre and Cinema in Bucharest and coordinator of the online film magazine Acoperișul de Sticlă (“the Glass Roof”). Irina wrote her doctoral thesis speculating on the roots of contemporary video essays in the tradition of essay cinema and co-edited an anthology of documentary theory, The reality of fiction, the fiction of the real (2018), and more recently, Romanian Cinema Inside Out — Insights on Film Culture, Industry and Politics 1912-2019 (Romanian Cultural Institute Press, 2019).

She programmed short films for the NexT International Film Festival (2011-2016) and her writing was published in journals and film magazines such as Close Up, Cineaste, Sight & Sound, Photogénie, IndieWire, Dilema Veche. Her research interests include videographic criticism, digital media, the essay film, film festivals, racial representation, historical representation in non-classical cinema.

Courses: Film Journalism Workshop, Film Form, Film Analysis and Criticism, Film Journalism in the Festival Circuit.

Gabriela Filippi PhD candidate

Gabriela Filippi is a teaching assistant and doctoral candidate at U.N.A.T.C. „I.L. Caragiale” with a thesis concerning the functioning of the film industry and the aesthetic practice of the Romanian cinema during the socialist era. Her main research interests concern the history of Romanian and East European cinema, and political film theory.

Together with Andrei Gorzo she edited the volume Filmul tranziției. Contribuții la interpretarea cinemaului românesc „nouăzecist” (Tact: 2017), a collection of essays on Romanian cinema of the 1990s. Her most recent publications: “Representing Modern Romania in the Musical of State Socialist Period,” in Ewa Mazierska and Zsolt Gyori (eds.), Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe (Bloomsbury Academic: 2018), and “Our Manager: The Myth and Its Era,” in Irina Trocan (ed.), Romanian Cinema Inside Out: Insights on film Culture, Industry and Politics 1912-2019 (Romanian Culture Institute Press: 2019). In the past years, she contributed to several film educational programs for young people: “CinEd”, “Éducation à l’image” and “Filme pentru liceeni”.

Courses: History of Romanian Cinema, Film criticism in Romania, Romanian film during 1948-1990

Christian Ferencz-Flatz Visiting Professor

He is an adjunct professor at the National University of Theatre and Film “I. L. Caragiale”, he is habilitated in film studies at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and he is a researcher in philosophy at the Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy.His research interests concern media philosophy, phenomenology, critical theory, philosophy of history and image theory. Together with Julian Hanich, he edited the journal issue Studia Phaenomenologica XVI: Film and Phenomenology (2016).

His most recent published monographs include: Filmul ca situație socială. Eseuri fenomenologice (Cluj-Napoca, 2018), Sehen Als-ob. Ästhetik und Pragmatik in Husserls Bildlehre (Nordhausen, 2016) and Incursiuni fenomenologice în noul film românesc (Cluj-Napoca, 2015). He coordinated several research grants and published numerous studies in reputed philosophical and film-scholarly journals. He authored the Romanian translations of major works by Husserl, Heidegger, Benjamin, Kracauer and Adorno.
 

Cursuri: Media Philosophy, Utility Film.

Alexandru Maftei Visiting Professor

Alexandru Maftei is visiting professor at the National University of Theatre and Cinema in Bucharest, film and theatre director, screenwriter and advertising professional. The film director’s black box(2019), his doctoral thesis published by Editura Universitară, follows the complex transformation of the screenplay into the movie, combining theoretical research with in depth analysis of his working methods.

His filmography includes TV feature Keep your eyes on happiness(1998), seven episodes of TV series Lombarzilor 8 (2006), bitter sweet comedy Hello! How are you? (2011), Miss Christina, a fantastic thriller based on Mircea Eliade’s novel. Alexandru is one of the most experienced Romanian advertising directors. From 2013 he stages theatre shows in Bucharest and other cities. More about his activity here: www.AlexandruMaftei.com

Courses: Collaborative Writing, Screenwriters-Directors; Character, dialogue, scene.

Cezar Gheorghe – Assistant Professor

Cezar Gheorghe is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at The I. L. Caragiale National University of Theatre and Film. He is a film critic and a literary critic, coordinator of the Film section at Observator cultural. He is the creator and host of The Narrative Podcast.

His main research interests are the relation between Cinema and Philosophy, intermediality, film adaptation and the relation between World Literature and World Cinema.

In 2014, he haș published Gândirea-cinema (Thinking with Cinema), a deleuzian critique of seminal texts in 20th century Film Theory. He has also published several film studies papers in different academic journals

In 2021 and 2022 he has coordinated the World Cinema & Literature Colloquium at the Harvard Institute for World literature. He is a jury member a co-organiser of the Observator cultural book awards.

Courses: Collaborative Writing, Screenwriters-Directors; Character, dialogue, scene.

Andreea Mihalcea PhD candidate

Andreea Mihalcea holds a BA and an MA degree in Film Studies from the National University of Theatre and Film “I. L. Caragiale”  in Bucharest, where she is currently a PhD student and a teaching assistant. She is writing her PhD thesis on the topic of user engagement in the field of interactive documentaries and works in film criticism and non-formal film education.

Her most recent essay – Participation and Co-creation in Interactive Documentaries. An Introduction – was published in The Reality of Fiction. The Fiction of the Real. Theoretical Approaches in Documentary Filmmaking edited by Andra Petrescu and Irina Trocan (Bucharest: Hecate, 2018).

Courses: Film Analysis and Criticism, Methods in Non-fictional Filmmaking History of Documentary Film, Film Journalism in the Festival Circuit

Oana Răsuceanu PhD student

Scriptwriter, playwright and theatre director. She co-wrote together with Ana Agopian and Iulia Rugina several scripts for short, medium and feature films, such as Breaking News (2017), Love Building (2013), Stuck on Christmas (2010), Dying from a Wound of Love (2014).

Her work in theater includes choreography performances and theater productions dedicated to young audiences. Oana is currently working on her her PhD research on Nordic Countries cinema with a paper called Narrative structures in Nordic contemporary cinema. Oana is an active trainer for several Educational Programs in film and theater, a cultural manager and also Founder of Control N Cultural Association.

Courses: Screenwriting