Alexandru Solomon
alecusolomon@hotmail.com

str. Traian 179
Bucharest 024043
Romania


Photo: Emanuel Parvu

A coproduction Hi Film (Romania) / Seppia (France) / Neon Rouge (Belgium) to be released in spring 2010

World sales: CAT&Docs, http://www.catndocs.com

Website: www.kapitalism.ro

Every city has the traffic it deserves

This is not a film about the how the roads or the cars look like, but about what the traffic turns us into. I chose 5 different people whom I accompanied all over town, in their every day journeys. Since May till October 2008, I have been with them in their car, sitting on the right seat and listening to them. They are all ordinary people:


- a delivery boy from the country whom, for the last 2 years, has been driving about 14 hours a day around the capital, covering about 150 kilometers each day;
- a half paralyzed man who not only drives a car, but he also helps other people to avail themselves of cars;
- a Peru born woman, who was raised in a city with an equally crazed traffic, who made her studies in New York and Madrid, and who is now the mother of three boys whom she takes to school each day in Bucharest;
- a father who has recently lost his daughter in a traffic accident and who still hopes that, one day, Romanian justice will do what it is supposed to do;
- a policeman who, before December ’89, was beaten up by the militia, a man who is still listening to rock music and who has been a traffic agent for 17 years.

Festivals:

Sofia IFF 2009
Thessaloniki Documentary IFF 2009
GoEast Festival / Wiesbaden, Germany
London International Documentary Festival 2009
Astra Documentary IFF 2009
East Silver Market, Jihlava, Czech Republic, nominated for the Silver Eye Award

Credits:

52 minutes, digiBeta
directed and photographed by: Alexandru Solomon; executive producer: Ada Solomon; delegate producers on behalf of HBO Romania: Carmen Harabagiu, Andrei Creţulescu; with Valerică Damian, Gentimir Cristian, Pal Karoly, Gina Raso, Mihai Vîrtopeanu; research and production: Ilinca Belciu; editing: Cătălin Cristuţiu; music: Einstürzende Neubauten; sound editing and mix: Pavel Cuzuioc, Constantin Grajdian; a film made by HI FILM Productions; project supported by the National Film Centre Romania

© HBO Romania, Hi Film Productions/ 2008

http://www.coldwaves.ro/


a film by Alexandru Solomon

This is a love and hate story built around something no one can see or touch: radio waves.
During the 80’s, Radio Free Europe was the secret relief and confidant of its Romanian listeners. The Radio was Ceausescu’s most important enemy; he even hired Carlos the Jackal to close it down.
All the protagonists of this story confront themselves once more in COLD WAVES: speakers of the radio, along with terrorists, listeners as well as party and Securitate officials, Romanians, Germans, Americans and French alltogether.
The world has changed, there are different wars now.
But if you listen to the voices, you may get a better picture. .

cu / with
Monica Lovinescu, Neculai Constantin Munteanu, Emil Hurezeanu, Detlev Mehlis, Josy Dubie, Doina Cornea, Richard Cummings, Vasile Paraschiv, Ilie Merce, Ilich Ramirez-Sanchez si altii

imagine / photography
Andrei Butică

montaj / editing
Cătălin F. Cristuţiu

înregistrare sunet / sound recording
Cristian Tarnoveţchi

post-producţie sunet / sound post-production
Titi Fleancu

mixaj sunet / sound mix
Yann Wirthor

muzică originală / original score
Sorin Romanescu / Trust Productions

producător delegat – Ada Solomon
producători – Alexandru Solomon, Elvira Geppert, Paul Thiltges

108 minute, 2007, Romania-Germania-Luxemburg.

o coproductie : HI FILM PRODUCTIONS, GEPPERT PRODUCTIONS, PAUL THILTGES DISTRIBUTIONS

cu sprijinul / with support from:
CENTRUL NATIONAL AL CINEMATOGRAFIEI, JAN VRIJMAN FUND

dezvoltată cu sprijinul / developed with the support of
MEDIA PROGRAMME OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY
NIPKOW PROGRAMM

in asociere cu / in association with : TELEVIZIUNEA ROMANA, YLE FST Finlanda

world sales: Paul Thiltges Distributions, www.ptd.lu

The film follows the paths of Chinese immigrants in Bucharest and pursues their occupational developments and private lives within their new homeland, marked by flux and radical change.

It focuses on two Chinese people – who in the meantime have settled in the Romanian capital – both of whom saw the revolution in Eastern Europe as a chance to leave China.

The lives of the central figures, characterized by dramatic turns, encounter a piece of recent Romanian history, providing a foreign view and a central Asian perspective on the former communist, European brother nation.
Katharina Copony was born 1972 in Graz, Austria. She studied media-arts in Vienna. Her previous film, „Il Palazzo“, won the Arte-documentary award for the Best German documentary in 2006.

credits
MY BEAUTIFUL DACIA
75 min. HD. Romanian with English subtitles.
Directors: Julio Soto & Stefan Constantinescu
Director of photography: Alexander Stikich
Editor: Julio Soto
Sound: Marin Cazacu
Produced by: The ThinkLab (Spain), Hi Film Productions (Romania)
Producers: Adriana Malfatti Chen, Alexandru Solomon, Julio Soto
With support from Centrul National al Cinematografiei and TVR (Romania), Media Program of the EU. Coproduced by Channel 4 (UK) and SVT (Sweden).
contact: Alexandru Solomon, Hi Film productions; address: str Traian 179, Bucuresti 024043, Romania; tel: +40.723.195.133, alecusolomon@hotmail.com

In April 2005, a media scandal was telling the story of a number of women fired from a small company based in Alsace, and who had been proposed relocation in Romania for a salary worth 110 euros. That was a tenth of the minimum wage in France.

This documentary overturns an absurd proposal and transforms it into a real exchange between people. In the context of European enlargement, with Romania becoming a new member in January 2007, LOW COST talks about issues that concern all of us.

“THE KING OF COMMUNISM” (2002) is a feature on Ceausescu’s pomp and cult of personality, on which I acted as Associate Producer. The film received the Grierson Award for Best Historical Documentary.

“HAMMER AND TICKLE – THE COMMUNIST JOKE BOOK” (2006) Most people don’t think of the Cold War as being a lot of laughs, but folks who lived on the darker side of the Iron Curtain look back at the funny side of life under Communism in this documentary.
I researched and organized the Romanian part of the film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, New York.

The film premiered at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival and was awarded “Best Documentary” honours at the 2002 Portland International Film Festival.

Since 2004, I have been developing projects with Ada, my wife, through Hi Film Productions – the company that she runs. (www.hifilm.ro)

• OCEANUL MARE
• MY BEAUTIFUL DACIA
• LOW COST
• THE KING OF COMMUNISM / HAMMER AND TICKLE – THE COMMUNIST JOKE BOOK
• THE STRUMA

2004 THE PHARAOH
Director of photography, 80 min. Dir. by Sinisa Dragin.
Selected at Rotterdam, Alba, Sarajevo FF.

2003 EXAM
Director of photography. Directed by Titus Muntean.
Selected at “Go East” Festival Wiesbaden, Germany.

2001 SWEET SAUNA OF DEATH
Director of photography.
Directed by Andrei Blaier.

2000 GOD KISSES US ON THE MOUTH
Director of photography, 90 min.
Directed by Sinisa Dragin.
Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival.
Special Prize at the Cairo Film Festival.
Camera Award at the Belgrade Film Festival.

1998 FACE TO FACE
director of photography, 90 min. Dir. by Marius Barna.
Selected at the Montreal and Los Angeles International Film Festivals.

1995 STATE OF THINGS
camera; 90 min. Directed by Stere Gulea.

1994 THE STONE CROSS
co-director of photography; 90 min.
Directed by Andrei Blaier.

1993 LOOK FORWARD IN ANGER
director of photography, 85 min.
Directed by N. Margineanu.
Great Prize at the Pesaro Film Festival
Special Prize at Troia Film Festival, Portugal.
Award for Cinematography, International Camera Festival, Bitola, Macedonia.

Through archive footage, newsreels and authentic photos of the time, the film tells the story of an imaginary character: Clara B., photographer and reporter. Clara’s existence is reconstructed by Jonas – a young museum archivist, who discovers a photography and documents’ stock, long forgotten in the storage.
At first, Jonas doesn’t know anything about Clara, just her birth date and place. Clara was born in 1901, in Strasbourg, then part of the German Empire. While he explores and matches images, letters, diary notes, hints found in the administrative archive, Jonas leads us through the twentieth century history. This is a quest of characters in search of identity in Franco-German Alsace; a film about an independent woman’s destiny in the middle of war scattered Europe; about friendship and betrayal.
Clara B.’s life keeps part of its mysteries and the documents in the archives are difficult to decipher. Clara B.: a meditation on archives, memory and history during the twentieth century history.

Prize for Best Documentary, Dakino – Bucharest, 2006

In 1959 there was robbery at the Romanian National Bank in Bucharest. This was a peculiar occurrence since the local currency (the lei) could only be spent inside Romania, and bank robberies, along with most other kinds of crimes, were presumed not to happen in the socialist utopia.

After confessing, the robbers agreed to re-enact their crime. An hour-long film was made in which they duly played themselves. There is some evidence that they thought by so doing they would be spared a death sentence. But after trial, also filmed, they were shot.

Alexandru Solomon’s film is both a bizarre recreation of a crime of which the motive is still difficult to fathom and an astonishing evocation of a lost world of Romanian Stalinism. It may not have been pleasant to live in 1950s Romania, but the images in the film have an eerie beauty.

Watch online:
http://docalliancefilms.com/film/7211/
or at:
http://www.muvix.ro/Filme/Marele-jaf-comunist–3215.aspx

Buy or rent in the US:
http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/emroDetail.asp?Number=2725

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/great-communist-bank-robbery.shtml

Romania’s greatest comic author, Caragiale, exiled himself to Berlin

6 min., 2002
English & German versions
A film by Alexandru Solomon
Produced by FAV studio with support of CNC (National Film Center)

“Caragiale is the world’s greatest unknown playwright”
Eugen Ionesco

Caragiale is the first Romanian great author to have left the country. During the last century so many others have tasted the bread of exile: Eugen Ionesco, Brancusi, Tristan Tzara became international personalities, integrated in the culture of their adoptive countries. This does not hold true for Caragiale, the greatest Romanian comic author. Fed up with Romania, he left his country and lived in Berlin from 1904 to 1912. He moved to an environment that represented the opposite of his cultural, social and even his human personality.
The story of his exile is that of the East meeting the West, located in a town that directly experienced this kind of split. One hundred years after Caragiale, history accentuated the break-up of these two parts of Europe.

This is a documentary that moots the very possibility of reconstructing a time and a world. Today, Bucharest – just as Berlin – is a devastated city striving to regain its identity. Very few things in Berlin remind today of the metropolis from the beginning of the twentieth century.

The final scene of Caragiale’s destiny seems to have been written by the great satiric author himself. After his death, the body was sealed in a coffin and sent to Romania by train, where a state funeral awaited it. But the car got lost for several days on the way and reached Bucharest after long rambles. This spirit – that could not find his place in Europe – is the main character of a film about our place in the world.

Awards

• Special Prize of the Jury, Romanian Filmmakers’ Union.
• Best Documentary, Alternative Festival, Targu Mures.
• Selected at Jerusalem, Mediawave & Sarajevo FF.

Broadcasted by TVR 2 / Romania. Special screenings in Berlin, London.

the life and pictures of Iosif Berman, reporter.

2001, 52 min. and 26 min., video and 35 mm
Written, directed and photographed by Alexandru Solomon
Edited by Nita Chivulescu
Music: Cristian Tarnovetchi
Produced by Ager Film with Fundatia Arte Vizuale and support from the CNC.

“Down with the poets! Down with the walls! Let the man with thousand eyes, thousand ears, thousand legs, thousand telegrams, thousand pens, thousand expressions, thousand pistols, let the true poet come.
LET THE REPORTER COME!”
Paul Sterian, 1931

He was always on the move. An omnipresent character, he was on the spot in the most different situations, wherever he could take pictures. His life was short, placed under the sign of speed.
His name was Iosif Berman, he was a photo-reporter and lived between 1892 and 1941.
He was surnamed the dean of the photoreporters, was close to the avangarde movement and had a great contribution to ethnographical photography.
At the end of his life his pictures and equipment were confiscated. The film starts at this point of the story, as Berman selects his photos in his try to save them. The sideboard with pictures, that lies in the building of the biggest newspaper trust in Bucharest, where Berman worked for 15 years, is a treasure of stories.
A film about the life of a man that had a meaning as long as he could take pictures.
A film about the life of pictures, that have a meaning through the destiny of a man.

Awards

• Best Documentary, Dakino Film Festival (2001).
• Best Short Documentary, Romanian Filmmakers’ Guild.
• Best Director and Best Photography, Cronograf FF, Chisinau.

Broadcasted by TVR 2.

Bucharest, city of dogs, village without watchdogs.

1998, 23 min.
Directed and photographed by Alexandru Solomon
Commentary written by Mircea Cărtărescu
A coproduction of Fundatia Arte Vizuale and the Soros Foundation, Romania.

Although today nobody seems to watch over Romania, Bucharest certainly is a city full of dogs. Here, man and dog are two species intimately mingled into one another like the damned souls of Dante’s inferno. Here, the human-eyed dog daily confronts the dog-eyed human.
Our city has a population of over 200,000 dogs. There are rich and poor dogs, dogs of the street and dogs that go to the hairdresser. This film documents the life of this parallel society, which is a mirror of the human society in Bucharest.

Awards

• Best Documentary Prize, Dakino Film Festival, Romania.
• Selected by Videoart Locarno, Eureka Screenings, Budapest, In Search of Balkania.

Broadcasted by TVR 2, Realitatea TV.

Romanian artists went to Zurich to invent Dada movement, 1916-1918.

1996, 40 min. and 30 min., video
A film by Radu Igazsag and Alexandru Solomon
Produced by Fundatia Arte Vizuale with support from Pro Helvetia.
In 1916, the Dada movement was born in Zurich with the contribution of three Romanian born artists: Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco and Arthur Segal. Filmed in Zurich, in some of the most important dada archives in the world, this documentary draws an ironic portrait of the city in contrast with the athmosphere of the Dada events. A substantial interview with Guido Magnaguagno, deputy director of Kunsthaus Zurich, accompanies the fresh visual flow.

Awards

• Special Prize, The Romanian Television Professionals’ Association.
• Great Prize, MediaFest ’96, Romania.
• Prize for Best Documentary, Young Filmmakers’ Festival, Costinesti (1996).

Broadcasted by TVR 2 / Romania.
Special screenings in Zurich, Paris, Bruxelles.

“Zurich Chronicle” has remarkably succeeded in reviving the satiric and revolutionary spirit of the Dada movement.”
Radu Bogdan, “Romania Literara”, May 9 1996

Paul Celan’s youth in Bucharest, 1945-47- a film on poetry, war and friendship.

994, 28 min., video
Written, directed and photographed by Alexandru Solomon
The film is based on Petre Solomon’s book: “Paul Celan – The Romanian Dimension (Bucharest, 1987).
Cast: Tomi Cristin, Adrian Ilea.
Editor: Dobrica Lospa.
Music: Mihai Mitrea-Celarianu: “Weil Paul Celan”.
Produced by Fundatia Arte Vizuale.

The film is centered on the friendship between Paul Celan and Petre Solomon, my father, developed in 1940-1947 in Bucharest. On the background of a maddening world, the two young poets have formed a so-called musical duo, transforming their anxieties and painful memories into poems and literary games.

Awards

• Prize for Best Video, International Youth Film Festival, Romania (1994).
• Special Prize, Mediafest ’96, Romania.
• Best Essay, Targu Mures (1994).
• Selected at Cracow / Poland (1995), Clermont-Ferrand (1996), Stuttgarter Filmwinter (1996).

Special screenings in Paris, Bruxelles, Mainz, Berlin.
Broadcasted by TVR 2 / Romania.

“A “documentary”, that contains history and literary history, fascism, stalinism and surrealism, the miracle of poetry, the miracle of friendship [...] a real “film d’ auteur”: lively, intelligent, with a great visual expressivity, vibrating of the spiritual rhytm in which the two friends have lived and have believed…”
Eugenia Voda – “Romania Literara”, nr.25/1994)