ION GRIGORESCU
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ION GRIGORESCU
I made the film Boxing in 1977, in the room in which I used to live a makeshift studio, located on the first floor of an apartment block. The room’s floor, which was black, suited my purpose and allowed the superimposition I had in mind for the boxing match, which was divided into 3-minute rounds, and made to correspond to the length of a standard 8mm double roll. With myself as the only possible actor, I had to do a double exposure of the film, boxing twice in opposite directions. The neighbors tolerated this until the third round, when they started tapping the ceiling with a broom. The match has its peculiarities the fighters are naked, the winner kicks his fallen opponent, there is no audience, no referee, no ring. The image of one fighter progressively fades, although he is the “stronger” one and will eventually win. The film Wasteland was shot during a trip to Lake Razelm, in Dobrogea. The fortress and mosque in Babadag are visible. This is the only film for which I wanted a soundtrack, not a live recording but a taped radio broadcast of the prayers on Friday. Shot in 1982, the film had a public screening the same year. The present copy has a similar soundtrack, from 2003. I have always developed films myself, but this Orwo film roll was expired and got damaged by overexposure to a large extent only the yellow layer remains. This effect was not preconceived, yet the film signals a decline and lack of working materials (in Romania in the 80ies). A connection is established between effect (the powerless image) and expression (the eyes full of sand). Other forms of weakness (the barren lands, ruin, death, fire, desiccation), which can leave one despondent, are sometimes compensated by the fast moves of the camera through space, or by opposing motion and motionlessness. Dialogue with Comrade Ceauşescu 1978 (President of the Socialist Republic of Romania, General Secretary of the General Committee of the Communist Party) Ceauşescu liked his “titles”, one had to enumerate all of them. He desired a “permanent dialogue with the people”. The artists included. What he meant by that was an obedient application of political and hierarchic sycophancy. Real dialogue was discouraged. I also made, for myself, such a phantasmatic “answer” program. The film demanded preparing the costumes, the disguise, and the mask which is shown in the end, and of the black cloth backdrop necessary to successively record the actions of the two characters and of the rolling of text. The take was interrupted by a friend’s visit he stayed in another room in order “not to know what I was doing there”. The “Dialogue” stayed censored until 1990. While watching it I realized I bore a certain resemblance to one of Ceausescu’s sons at least that is how I look when I take off my mask, and that the dialogue between the viewpoint I had attributed to him and my own viewpoint closely resembles very well the political dialogue in post-revolutionary Romania, as far as ideas and the lack of mutual understanding are concerned. Ion Grigorescu |