With his piercing critical gaze, sure sense of aesthetic orientation and in-depth knowledge of cinematic history, Andrei Gorzo is one of the most authoritative voices in Romanian film. In this conversation of the Feraru series, the outspoken critic looks back to more than a century of Romanian cinema, applying his razor-sharp skills on topics like the late collective bloom of indigenous cinema, the impact of communism on Romanian film-making, the circulation of American tropes in Romanian popular cinema, the Romanian New Wave and what comes next, our chances for an Academy Award and the future of cinema in a time of multiple crises.
Andrei Gorzo studied at the National University of Theatrical and Cinematographic Art “I.L. Caragiale” in Bucharest and New York University (NYU). With a PhD in cinematography, he teaches the history of cinema and cinema ideas at NUTCA/UNATC. Between August 2017 and January 2018 he was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Stanford University. His research interests include: the aesthetics and politics of the post-2000 New Romanian Cinema, the cinema of the Cold War, and the history of found-footage filmmaking. He is the author of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Cinema (2009), Things that Cannot Be Said Otherwise: A way to think about cinema, from André Bazin to Cristi Puiu (2012), Images Framed in History: The century of Miklós Jancsó (2015), and The Life, the Death and and the After-Life of Film Criticism (2019).
Photo credit: Dan Bodea