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    • NTC Award Ceremony
      New Talent Competition gives young filmmakers from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe the opportunity to present their outstanding debut or second film to the public. Join us on Sunday 1 December at 19h
    • Music at ENFF
      The Eastern Neighbours Film Festival welcomes special musical guests each year to enrich our program. For this 16th edition, we’re thrilled to present two talented young musicians: guitarist Antonio Peršak (CR) and violinist İdil Yunkuş (TR). Together, they will perform a traditional Balkan dance and folk song, highlighting the beauty of this music through the… Read more: Music at ENFF
    • Masterclass with Janez Burger
      This masterclass presents a unique opportunity to explore Burger's distinct storytelling style, genre use, and exploration of contemporary social issues. Join us on Saturday 30 November at 17h - Room 5
    • Panel Discussion: Exploration of individual and collective memory in cinema
      Panel Discussion: Exploration of individual and collective memory in cinema on Friday 29 November at 18h

On Tour in Amsterdam: Film on Nina Cassian, Famous Romanian Poet & Enfant Terrible

Saturday 2 November | 15:00 hours | Rialto | Ceintuurbaan 338, 1072 GN Amsterdam

In collaboration with Eastwards, ENFF On Tour brings the Dutch premiere of THE DISTANCE BETWEEN ME AND ME by Mona Nicoara and Dana Bunescu in Rialto Amsterdam. A documentary about Nina Cassian, Romanian enfant terrible. She was an amazing poet, translator, journalist, pianist, composer and film critic. A fascinating artist whose life was a unique fight between ethics and aesthetics, and who saves herself in fairy tales through times of fascism, communism and an unwanted exile into capitalism. The screening will be followed by Q&A with the director Dana Bunescu and musical performance by Balkan Vrouwenkoor Amsterdam! Come and join us.

Synopsis

We all wrestle with our past. Some more than others. Romanian Jewish avant-garde poet, musician, visual artist, femme fatale, prodigious drinker and terminal smoker Nina Cassian had more than most to wrestle with. Her refuge in the Communist underground during the Fascist 1940s put her first in complicit proximity to the Stalinist regime of the 1950s. Then propelled her on a collision course with the Ceausescu regime in the 1970s and eventually sent her into an unwanted New York exile in 1985, when her poems led to a secret police murder. An intensely personal film about art, belief and politics based on a rich archive of films, music, poems, official television appearances, never-before-seen private recordings and secret police surveillance materials.

Director’s statement

Together with producers Ada and Alexandru Solomon, who have an even longer personal story with Nina, we embarked on this project of excavating the many layers of mythology and ideology that surround this unique, defiant figure in a country where before 1989 dissent was rare, where “Communist” became an unexamined dirty word in the first minutes of the Revolution, where Jewishness remains to this day a taboo subject, and “feminism” is a joke. We believe that Nina’s story teaches necessary lessons in a time when creative freedom is once again threatened by the rise of authoritarianism and extremism, surveillance returns as a tool for global repression and censorship, and the forces of nationalism bear down on more global, internationalist projects. (Mona Nicoară)

Original title: Distanţa dintre mine şi mine Country: Romania, USA Year: 2018 Length: 89 min Director: Mona Nicoara, Dana Bunescu Idea: Ada Salomon Editing: Dana Bunescu Cinematography: Ovidiu Marginean, Rudolf Costin Production: Ada Solomon & Alexandru Solomon – Hi Film Productions, Mona Nicoara – Sat Mic Film, Diana Paroiu – Romanian Public Television