The Second the World Changed
12:08 East of Bucharest follows three characters who attempt to account for their activities a the exact time of the revolution in Romania – 22nd December 1989 at 12:08. Carol Murphy talks to writer/director Corneliu Porumboiu about getting the film made and his approach to screencraft.

After graduating in 2003 from the University of Drama and Film in Bucharest, Corneliu Porumboiu won an award to attend the Cinefondation in Paris – a 6-month residency scheme which runs as part of the Cannes Film Festival for young filmmakers from outside of France to help them develop their feature film projects. In Paris he wrote 12:08 East of Bucharest over the period of a month and a half after putting another feature project that he had been working on for two years to one side. The inspiration came from a regional television panel programme he saw in Romania five years prior. Three characters in the panel programme discussed individual involvement in the 1989 revolution based on the idea that their revolutionary glory depended on whether or not they were in the local town square before or after 12:08 precisely, the time that the revolution kicked off in Bucharest. Or did they all watch on television as the angry crowds forced Romanian dictator Ceausescu to flee Bucharest by helicopter?

12:08 East of Bucharest introduces us to three such characters as we approach Christmas in a bleak small town in Romania sixteen years after the revolution. The owner and presenter of a local TV station invites a retired widower and sometime Santa Claus and an alcoholic history teacher onto his show to chew the cud over the ‘heroic’ events which took place sixteen years ago whilst viewers waste no time in phoning into the station to throw a spanner in the works and challenge the ‘truth’ of these stretched memories.

12:08 East of Bucharest was shot in 2005 and premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2006, where it subsequently won the Camera d’Or.

Carol: Where did you get the idea to make a film about the Romanian revolution of 1989, set in the present day?

Corneliu: I saw a televised debate about it five years ago in my hometown of Vaslui in the East of Romania. The question of the day was: was there, or was there not a revolution in our town? Three people were arguing over how the events unfolded at the time. This subject had been bouncing around in my head for five years. Then, in May last year, I finished writing a screenplay that I’d been working on for two years, but I was still not happy with. So I began writing 12:08 East of Bucharest, using these three characters that I had seen on television as inspiration. It was a sort of therapy to distance myself from the other screenplay. To my great surprise, I finished it one month later. I was so happy with it I decided to begin filming as soon as possible.

Each character has his own way of dealing with a time that is lost and is now gone.

Each character has his own past and his own truth, and I was very attracted to these small truths. The story of the old man with his wife – it doesn’t matter whether or not it was the revolution, for him it was his relationship with his wife that is now lost. Another thing is that I was at home after Christmas and all the old people were out. I was feeling the clothes, the smell of their shaving, and this was a point when I was remembering this subject, and it felt like another world – the clothes were all from before ’89. It was a little bit of my history too, and I was attracted to it because when there has been so much change a lot of people lose.

How do you sit in relation to your characters who are at odds with their past?

I am like the character of the young cameraman who films the 'revolutionary' debate. He wants to participate, so he tries to give his point of view with his framing and by being innovative. He films the witnesses in close-ups, zooms, moves close to them to capture some of their truthfulness. Like him, I wanted to involve myself directly in the film in the first person.

An engineer who becomes a journalist, a Securitate member who fashions himself a factory owner… how do you see the changes that occurred in the lives of your characters?

In my film I don’t stigmatise the Securitate guy who works every day and who has his own version of history. Unlike him, many people were not able to take advantage of the changes in society since the revolution. Look at the history teacher: he holds on to his past without moving forward, he doesn’t work and he refuses to change his life.

And your characters argue their truths so vehemently.

I don’t believe in one historical truth. The whole film is based on this. I find myself in each of my characters, but each one has their own truth. Above all, what remains of a revolution – more than the symbols and images of its leaders – are the contradictory memories of people like those in the film. I thought of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon: how do we transform the reality that we want to remember? The characters in my film don’t lie like they do in Kurosawa’s, but when they want to remember something that happened sixteen years ago, they begin to modify reality. Each person has his or her own memories and perspective. Where is the truth? I show the different options and, because people forget so quickly, their memory blurs the facts and transforms reality.

Where does the humour that plays with paradoxes, the absurd, and a sense of fatalism come from?

This humour is like a thread that weaves its way through my films. It is probably linked to an idea of a certain fatality in life. As we speak on the phone, at this very moment, I’m watching a beer commercial. And I will go have one after our conversation is over. We Romanians have, in a way, invented absurdity... or least we’ve made an art of it. But I don’t have any method. Humour is beyond me. It must come from my hometown and the mentality of the people in this area.

What about the structure of the film? It’s not your typical three-act-structure, payoff type model. How does that work? If you wanted to get it made in Britain you would have to follow certain rules. How difficult was it for you to get this made?

First of all I saw the TV, and I wanted to put it onto the screen. And after that I thought about the structure, because I produced this movie myself. I found sponsors and my family helped me, so I was independent.

Totally independent?

Totally. So I do what I want. No rules. So I thought that the structure that I wanted in the second part, this unprofessional cameraman, was a way to make it as visceral as I saw it through his character.

But you still have to sell it.

I don’t think about this when I make a movie. I am thinking that from my experience, from my shorts – I did a lot in my school. I think if it’s a good story, a powerful story, and with the characters, then I don’t think of the public when I make a movie. I think if the story is working and the characters are continuous after that it will make it to the public.

It’s not just about the story but the way that you tell the story, obviously. How does that affect how we as an audience read the film?

Each time I am thinking about time; what time means in cinema. So the characterization of my characters is the first part, because I am really concerned with the time of being and the time of the cinema. So I choose the type of description in the first part – they are from a small town, they are of a certain age – and I choose a style where things happen very slowly, and they come from another kind of characterization and another way to express their world and another point of view, and I think it works. If you enter into the story and you accept it like that then you understand the things that are happening afterwards in the TV station.

Do you film the lives of your characters without moving the camera to be more realistic?

Yes. All my films are inspired by real events, but realist cinema is a pious wish – it is impossible to make. That is why I create my own reality. For example, I filmed the TV show on the revolution in real time, but in my own way. I am like the young cameraman in the film who wants to put his personal stamp on everything he does. I take real situations and I transform them. For this film, I decided not to move the camera – to give the characters time. Contrary to the young people in my short films, who were very close in age to me, the characters in 12:08 East of Bucharest are not the same age as me. I had to get to know them...

And is this where the distance comes from?

Yes. By not moving the camera I wanted to let their way of living express itself. I didn’t want to cut scenes, but let them breathe on their own. Time is very important in this film: it is 'sixteen years after the revolution...' I was trying to show how life in a small town creates a certain way of being.
Where does the atmosphere in your long takes come from? What are your influences?
I like Jim Jarmusch’s early films a lot, though I don’t really think about him when I’m filming. His style does have little echoes in this film, which resembles a realist documentary. When I write a screenplay I think first of all about capturing the spirit of the story. It is from there that I begin writing as a director. Down by Law probably inspired the slightly strange structure of my story: in the first part we follow each of the characters, and then we find them altogether on a TV talk show. Aesthetically the spirit of the painter Vermeer inspired me. There is not much happening dramatically in his paintings, but I wanted to capture something of a way of living and being.

Are you interested in developing a style or a signature?

I am also a scriptwriter, and at the first point I am trying to understand how to put that particular story onto the screen. But now I don’t think to develop a very particular style. I don’t know yet. Maybe the next movie it will be a first person story, so I will follow the first character, but I think the concept of time in cinema is something that is in all my movies.

What about the Cinefondation in Paris? How did that affect your work and how was the experience?

It was an amazing experience for me because I come from a small culture with small problems. So when I lived in Paris with another five directors from all over the world, each one has another point of view on cinema. To talk about it, and all these shorts festivals, is very important because it is a way of finding yourself. So first of all I wrote the script and I talked about cinema with a lot of the young directors – one from Argentina, Brazil, Finland, Canada and another one from Israel – and after that we were introduced to the business because we had some meetings with the CNC [Centre National de la Cinématographie], etc., to see the system. I met a lot of producers from France who were more or less interested in my work, so I had a lot of contacts. It was on a different level and it was a major experience for me. In a way I have to say that Cannes was very important because of the Cinefondation and all the confirmation I got from outside for my development.

In terms of either writing a film or making a film, do you think in terms of communicating a message or a theme – in order to get a film off the ground?

When I structure a movie in the end I think about what the movie is about. After that each character is supposed to have a theme at the end. So I structure the movie like that of course.

Because here in Britain I feel that it takes priority and it is almost as if the film is a midwife.

Oh yes, I am really afraid of being too conceptual. So all the time I am in two minds. It is very easy to be very conceptual from my point of view and it is very hard to be realistic. So all the time I am really afraid of this and I try to rethink it and work with actors and find actors who bring something new and don’t let me be too conceptual. I am really afraid of this, that my movie could be described in just a sentence or something like this – I want it to be a movie!

That is how a lot of people sell their ideas, by making something which can be described in one line.

Yes, but it is very hard for me. It could be a trap.

We can see from your film that here was a place that at one point had a lot of attention due to the revolution in Romania, but that we are now left with the detritus of that. Your film does not deal with the politics head on, but it is certainly there. Are you interested in political exposure at all?

No. I wasn’t interested in this at all. The only political way was that I think that even now in Romania we are not interested in individuals, so making this movie was about small destinies. After that it could be political, but like a point a view; just to follow an ordinary story which was not trying to be very heroic but to see this subject from a very sincere point of view.

You said also in the production notes that you want every inch of film to be accounted for.

Yes. Every line. It is an obsession of mine.

Does that mean that you allow yourself a certain amount of film in order to restrict yourself deliberately?

No no no, it is a problem of editing the movie. I am thinking all the time to get the rhythm and right time. I am very… if I cut there or if I cut there what will it mean? –these kind of problems. Is this line appropriate there; is this line appropriate there? All the time I have this feeling that each second is worth it, so all the time I have this problem.

That is more at the editing stage, but do you deliberately give yourself limitations when you are making your film?

First of all I am really interested in acting, the relationships; and all the time it is this fight, you know? I change, I don’t like it, I write into the night, I change the text for the next day. I’ve been working with the same team for the past few years, which makes things easier. I spend a lot of time with my actors. I make very few changes on set – I might, for example, try a different blocking – this is a key element for me. Each second of the film and each centimetre of film stock must be justified and have a sense. In the same way that each character must have his or her own gestures, I expect my actors to forget themselves in order to be more in their roles. We rehearsed a lot before shooting; this helped me to find the essence of the characters. When it works I follow them around everywhere, and I’m even ready to change dialogue for them. On the other hand, when it doesn’t work, I dream of being able to work with them like Robert Bresson (laughs).

In a way you are creating an event in making it?

All the time I am trying to describe a world and also to have a meaning in the whole movie, but I am very interested in the first point – to describe a world. From my point of view to describe it is worth it.

A new Romanian cinema is emerging in the international film festivals, but are directors like you obliged to produce their own films?

No. This film is a special case, because I wrote the screenplay in June 2005 and I wanted to shoot immediately without waiting for a decision from the Romanian government-funding agency. We shot in December 2005. The film was relatively simple to produce. I work with a group of friends, and a lot of people helped me. It is much less expensive to make a film in Romania than it is in France or Germany. I have yet to find a Romanian producer who will support me in my ideas, so I have to produce myself in order to be able to follow though to the end on the story I want to make. I even invested some of my own money in the film. I don’t want to have to answer to anyone.

According to your colleague Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) there isn’t a Romanian New Wave, just desperate directors.

(Laughs) He is exactly right!

12:08 East of Bucharest (A fost sau n-a fost?) is released on 21st September.