SOMEWHERE

a film by Silviu Purcărete

INPALILULACOntaCtLibra Film ProductionsStr. Popa Soare Nr. 52, ap. 4023984, Sector 2, Bucharest, RomaniaT +40 21 326 64 80F +40 21 326 02 60office@librafilm.netwww.librafilm.net

> SYNOPSIS > COMPANY PROfILELibra Film is an independent film/TV production company founded in 1994, having a focus on producing feature films, but shorts and documentaries as well.

In 2004, Libra produced the award-winning documentary Great Communist Bank Robbery, by Alexandru Solomon. In 2006 Libra was behind the local box-

office hit Love Sick, by Tudor Giurgiu, which had its world premiere at Berlinale, in Panorama.

Libra was also the Romanian partner for Kornél Mundruczó’s Cannes 2008 competition film Delta, awarded with FIPRESCI award and then co-produced the directorial debut of actress Fanny Ardant, Ashes and Blood.

Most recent title, Katalin Varga, by Peter Strickland was named the European Discovery of the Year at the 2009 European Film Awards and awarded with a Silver Bear at Berlinale 2009. Lineup of 2010–2011 projects consist of Somewhere in Palilula, by Silviu Purcărete, and The Bear by Dan Chisu.

Romania, the 60s. Serafim, a fresh graduate of Medical School, is brought by a gloomy whim of destiny to the town of Palilula. Nowhere, that is. Palilula is a ghost town, lost in the middle of the Vallahian plain. A quarantine area, a sanatorium, improbable hospital, a gynecological clinic in a settlement where no child is born. A community of Italians who forgot their language, but not the nostalgia for their canzonettas. Italians with Danubian taste and disorientation. The young doctor Serafim will not get to practice his profession as a pediatrician, in this childless town. He will be drowning in the sweet and poisoned honey of the place, like a fly caught by a frog.

Palilula set

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This film speaks about an era. About a place where the essence of this era is condensed, twisted, squeezed into; Palilula, this poetical corner of the Balkans, inhabited by an imbecile yet charming population, isolated for eternity in a rhythm of drunken-ness, feasting, orgies, and carrying with it the myths, the legends, the phantasms, the anecdotes, the scandals that define it as a perpetual group.

It is a nostalgic look at the 60’s and 70’s and, for those who did not experience the époque, an encoun-ter with the absurdity of that era.

Changes of political regimes, deaths, fires and floods, none of these major, tremendous changes of the outside world, do not disturb at all the inhabitants of Palilula.

And no political regime is stronger than the purely Roma-nian inclination towards mockery. Laughed at, ignored, tickled by the belly- button, exorcised in such way, even communist dictatorship becomes a caricature.

The characters of the film are presented in moments of their live and even if sometimes extremely brief, these moments describe them individually and define them as members of the group they belong to, deprived of any chance to escape and lacking any aspira-tion to do so.

Alternatively agitated or lazy, happy or melancholic, they are al-ways there, together in the center of the world, on the oleander terrace, at the hospital or at the Boema hotel.

Their stories run at various rhythms, as do the images of buildings, the landscapes, the lights, the faces (human and animal), sometimes broad and diluted, other times quick and merry; like in the silent movies at times, in hilarious, climactic, parodical, ironical sequences.

The story is structured by sea-sons, the scenes represent extracts of the springs, summers, autumns and winters collection of Palilula. But there is also a fifth season as well, the season of the frogs.

Music is a crucial element. The gipsy taraf is always there, almost everywhere, ready to act, to inter-act, to point out the sensation of continuous and inexplicable feast, of self- forgetting, of freeing, of evasion from the real. The cymbal is the key- instrument, the one that gives the rhythm of the party, of life. Its music fades into the music of Verdi’s opera, sung by the characters with vague, old Italian roots, the arias and choirs - mo-ments of collective out breaking. The sound universe of Palilula also comprises the cry of the bird from afar, the quacking of the frogs, the symphonic snoring, the dripping of the water drops from the eaves, in spring, and the sinister sound of the engine siren.

Immorality and melancholyPalilula is nowhere, i.e. everywhere. It is a small island in the centre of the Vallachian plain, made of the dust of a distant planet.

Over there, the physical laws of the Earth are not as rigorous as

they normally are,Over there, one can never know

if people lie, dream or really live.As in “The Exterminating

Angel”, one can enter Palilula, but can never leave. Over there, the “exterminating angel” is called immorality and melancholy.

In Palilula, the animals, be they frogs or goats, lie and rave as do the humans- and they do live together in a spirit of brotherly solidarity.

In Palilula, the dead are as merry as the living, as talkative and as fond of the bottle as them.

In Palilula no device built by a civilized human brain will ever work. As for the local engineering, that truly challenges any kind of rationality.

Nobody works in Palilula, but all cram their paunches.

No child is born in Palilula. Young or old, all adults there have never stepped over the threshold of childhood: Palilula is a ground for retarded playing.

Almost all Palilulans are Italian. But nobody can recall how they got there. Anyway, among the ever thirsty and the frogs, the ancient courtesans, and the surviving aristocrats, the perfectly healthy patients and the sick doctors, the Communist Party has made it’s en-try- a killjoy, which reminds us that, even in Palilula, time can ravage.

Palilula is the Inferno with exha-lations of Paradise.

Palilula is Paradise consumed in the flames of the Inferno.

Irony gives noblesse and compro-mises, at the very same moment

and in equal shares. It plays a major role in the description of the tender, peaceful and care-less atmosphere of this isolated universe. The sequences of this world are repetitive and seem immobile, even if the elements are presented in a very dynamic, ex-aggerated, shocking and intense manner.

My vision is to focus on this monstrous experience in a serene, detached, floating, supremely ironical way. That is the point of view from which the characters of this film relate to the surrounding, yet infinitely remote reality.

For me, the fundamental themes of the film would be:

1) First of all a question: what heritage do I leave to my son,

except a goat hoof?Therefore, the message struc-

tures around the theme of herit-age and memory, two of the most talked- upon themes of our days,

2) Then comes the answer, banal and very much spread- around: the heritage, the only heritage that I, as a Romanian, or a citizen of Burkina- Fasso, an

Algerian, Bosnian, or Columbian – I mean a person emerging from a minor culture- can be nothing else but the story itself.

The story is the only one that can ennoble the filth. Reality doesn’t matter any more, when told. Even more, reality doesn’t even exist, unless it is told . . .

Silviu Purcărete is one of the most appreciated European theatre directors. He has over 30 years experience and he signed memorable plays specially in National Theatre of Craiova or recently in Sibiu. He’s living now in France having also French citizenship.

Member with personal title of Europe’s Theatres Union, he won Golden Globe Peter Brook Prize for Best Theatre Director in 1995 and Artistic Excellency Award of Hamada Foundation (Edinburgh International Festival 1991)

His productions have won many awards and great critical acclaim both in Romania and abroad. In 1996 Purcărete became Director of the Centre Dramatique National de Limoges for whom his productions have included ‘Oresteia’, ‘Three Sisters’ and ‘Don Juan’.

Opera credits include ‘La Boheme’ (Essen), ‘Parsifal’ (Scottish Opera coproduction with WNO), Donizetti’s ‘Roberto Devereux’ (Wiener Staatsoper) and Rameau’s ‘Castor et Pollux’ (Opera Bonn).

His work has been seen extensively in the UK and includes ‘The Decameron’, ‘Phaedra’ and Aeschylus’ ‘Danaides’ (Glasgow), ‘Oresteia’ (Lyric Hammersmith), ‘Ubu Rex’ (Edinburgh International Festival) and ‘The Tempest’ (Nottingham Playhouse).

In 2005 Purcărete directed

‘Scapino’ or ‘The Trickster’ at Chichester Festival Theatre. In 2006, ‘The Twelfth Night’, a National Theatre of Craiova production, was presented during the Bath Shakespeare Festival, and in 2007, Purcărete directed Eugene Ionesco’s ‘Macbett’ for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In 2009 his “Faust” performance was one of the hits of prestigious Edinburgh Theatre Festival, main actress Ofelia Popii being awarded with the Angel Award for the Mephistopheles role.

“Somewhere in Palilula” will be his first feature film.

Writer and director: Silviu PurcăreteProducer: Tudor GiurgiuCast: Dimeny Aron, George Mihăiţă, Răzvan Vasilescu, Constantin Chiriac, Horaţiu Mălăele, Ofelia PopiiCinematographer: Adrian SilișteanuMusic: Vasile ȘirliSet design: Helmut Sturmer, Dragoș BuhagiarEditor: Cătălin F. Cristuţiu

Production company: Libra FilmCo-produced by: Ministry of Culture’s Cinema Studio, Generic Audiovizual (GAV), Tandem Film, Hai-Hui EntertainmentSupported by: Romanian National Film Center (CNC), Balkan FundCo-financed by: Romanian Television (TVR), Zenith Media, OMD, Starcom, Mindshare, Media Concept Store, Initiative Media, Splendid ThematicsDeveloped with the support of the MEDIA program of the European Union

Budget approx: 1.9 M EuroNeeded for completion: 300.000 EuroPost-production calendar:• sound postproduction: (ADR’s, foley) – July-August 2010• final edit: October 2010• sound design: Fall 2010• visual FX: July 2010 – February 2011• sound mixing: March 2011Delivery date: April 2011

> SOMEWHERE IN PALILULARunning time: 150 min Shooting format: High Definition (RED)Delivery format: 35 mmOriginal language: RomanianGenre: Black Comedy

> DIRECtOR’S StAtEMEnt

> SILVIU PURCăREtE

> QUOtES fROM fOREIgN PRESS“Silviu arranges the stage like a master chef might check the set-tings and arrangements for an important banquet...”

– Dick McCaw (Royal Holloway College)

“Magnificent Magic” – The Irish Times (on Les Danaides)

“Purcărete… is a name we will not be able to forget.” – New York Post (on Les Danaides)

“Stunning talent from Romania” – Observer (on Phaedra)

“Distinguished by their peculiarly hypnotic fusion of sound and spectacle, his productions tend to have the seamless intensity and archetypal quality of a dream...”

– Paul Taylor

“Humain profondément humain, avec la pudeur et la démesure de l’artiste, avec la candeur et la rouerie du paysan, avec l’humor et le piquant de l’érudit, Silviu n’a acucun mal à convaincre ses collaborateurs: il ne demande que ce dont il a besion pour réaliser les chimères qui l’habitent”.

– Alain Garlan (Director of Theatre de L’Union)

“Quite the most blisteringly stunning theatrical experience of this (or, appropriately enough, any other) life’

– The Observer on Faust

“Most overwhelming sense of evil I’ve experienced in a theatre…” – The Times on Faust

BIO

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