- Occupation
Director - Country
Romania
Calciu Laurentiu
The Land is Waiting
What it must be like to live in a poor family in a small village in North-East Romania? We can ask Mihai, one of the ten children of a hard-working couple who is trying to educate all of their offspring. They have managed to send five of them to schools in the town; sadly, Mihai had to give up the seminary and return to the village, where he is helping his family to farm what little land they own. Since he intends to return to his studies next year, he uses every free moment to study for the exams. He tells us about his brief staying in the town and how students from rural areas are marginalized. Interestingly, staying at home is also awkward for him, because he does not feel like he truly belongs here and he wants to leave.
After the Revolution
The film observes the situation in Bucharest in the period immediately following the 1989 revolution - a period of continual street protests against a government that took over from the Communist Party a bit too smoothly. You can see ordinary people talking passionately on the streets, filmed with patience and humour. Context and structure is provided by the political leaders and journalists, and the hurried (and heavily disputed) election. The 1990 election itself is covered in a crowded polling station and concludes with a press conference by the international election monitors who appear shocked by the amount of ‘irregularities’ they have seen.
What it must be like to live in a poor family in a small village in North-East Romania? We can ask Mihai, one of the ten children of a hard-working couple who is trying to educate all of their offspring. They have managed to send five of them to schools in the town; sadly, Mihai had to give up the seminary and return to the village, where he is helping his family to farm what little land they own. Since he intends to return to his studies next year, he uses every free moment to study for the exams. He tells us about his brief staying in the town and how students from rural areas are marginalized. Interestingly, staying at home is also awkward for him, because he does not feel like he truly belongs here and he wants to leave.
After the Revolution
The film observes the situation in Bucharest in the period immediately following the 1989 revolution - a period of continual street protests against a government that took over from the Communist Party a bit too smoothly. You can see ordinary people talking passionately on the streets, filmed with patience and humour. Context and structure is provided by the political leaders and journalists, and the hurried (and heavily disputed) election. The 1990 election itself is covered in a crowded polling station and concludes with a press conference by the international election monitors who appear shocked by the amount of ‘irregularities’ they have seen.
Laurenţiu was born and bred in Bucharest. When the Revolution came he was a Math teacher. Soon after, he got hold of a VHS camera and started filming the new democracy emerging in the Bucharest streets in 1990. It was then that he met Rupert, who was in Romania as a journalist and aid worker.Since capturing real life on film was obviously his passion, he decided to pursue it professionally and in 1991 was admitted to the National Film and School Television in UK, where he was awarded a Post Graduate Diploma in Documentary Filmmaking.After graduating in 1995 he returned to Romania for a couple of years to teach documentary filmmaking and then in 1997 left for Greece, where he shot a documentary about life in the Dodecanese Islands, he spent and filmed months on a container ship that was sailing from Greece to Japan and made a documentary about the route of Jason and the Argonauts through the states on the coast of the Black Sea.In Romania he made the award winning documentary “The Land is Waiting”, as well as several other short or full length documentaries about Roma life. He is very passionate about the Roma, their way of life and culture and has decided to study the Romani language.