I was in my first year at UNATC (National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale”). In the hallway on the ground floor, George Blonda was pulling a cart filled with film reels. I asked him what he was doing and where he was taking them. “What am I doing? I’m going to throw them away!” he replied, laughing. They were reels with exercises filmed by former students. At that time, it seemed impossible to me to throw away film, especially in those retro metal cans. I asked if I could take a few. Several of my colleagues and I crowded around, we grabbed the metal cans with or without reels inside them, and we took them home. There was an enthusiasm there that still moves me. Over time, I used them in projects, filled them with various things, forgot them in closets, but every time I rediscover them, they take me back to my first year of school, to the effervescence of encountering cinema, to the yet-unexplored joy of discovering the film faculty and its people.
Bio contributor
Maria Cârstian is a copywriter and film selector. She studied screenwriting and film theory at UNATC and Stockholm University. She is drawn to archives, sound, and Asian cinema, and she writes about various topics in various places.
This film reel was one of the closest items I found related to The Suspense as it was originally introduced and developed in this form. It also reminded me of one the greatest films by Hitchock, Rope (1948). In this film he tried to deliver a film of one long shot, but as the film reels had a certain length by that time, he had to find some way to cut without the audience noticing that there was a cut. – Andrew Mohsen, curator