The cinema of Moldova developed in the early 1960s during the Soviet period, experiencing a flowering of about a decade and a half. Stagnation followed, and after the Moldavian SSR became independent in 1991, the industry almost completely disappeared.
The beginnings of Moldovan cinema are difficult to trace, owing largely to the divergent cinematic histories of the left- and right-bank regions, a division which continues today. From 1897 to 1927, film production in Moldova was sparse and remains mostly undocumented. After Bessarabia, now part of Moldova’s current territorial boundaries, was absorbed into Romania in 1918, the USSR created the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) on the left bank of the Dniester River in 1924. This newly created Soviet republic included land taken from Ukraine as well as modern-day Transnistria, a breakaway region that remains unrecognized by any UN-member nations. At that time, the USSR attempted to modernize and Sovietize the MASSR, which included cryrillicizing the Romanian language, industrializing the region, and educating many of the MASSR’s film professionals at the Odessa State College of Cinematography in neighboring Ukraine.
Most of the films produced by these early Moldovan film professions were documentary works, most of which were propaganda films, such as Protest Rally: Remember Bessarabia (1928), The Bessarabian Agricultural Community (1928), and Five Years of the MASSR (1928). However, the 1928 documentary Everything is Quiet is the most noteworthy film from this period and included an entirely Moldovan film crew.
Despite these efforts, the region never had its own national film studio. Throughout the MASSR’s existence, the Moldovan film industry and Ukrainian film industry were almost one and the same: in 1930, the USSR created the Moldovan cinematography department at UkraFilm, which change its title in 1934 and, again, in 1936. Additionally, many film workers involved with these early MASSR productions were Ukrainian.
1939-1952
In the right-bank region, filmmaking in Bessarabia was virtually nonexistent since its cinematic identity was bound up with that of Romania’s, which, due to devastation occasioned by World War I, was progressing at a modest pace. After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, which effectively ceded Bessarabia to the USSR, the Soviet army invaded Bessarabia and took control of the region. From 1940 to 1944, Bessarabia experienced its biggest in the field of cinema since 1918. Several Russian-language films were subtitled in the Romanian language, and Soviet filmmakers began producing documentaries and newsreels about the region, such as On the Danube.
This cinematic growth came to an end, though, when Nazi Germany and Romania, which had recently aligned itself with the Axis Powers, moved into Bessarabia and crossed the Dniester River into modern day Transnistria. Afterwards, all soviet republics’ film industries were enlisted into the war effort and, like the film industries of the Allied Powers, produced documentaries and newsreels about the USSR’s military activities.
After the USSR recaptured Bessarabia and Transnistria, both regions were devastated by the war. Chişinău, the capital city of Moldova, was almost entirely destroyed from the bombing campaigns. But the Bessarabian region also faced additional hurdles, as noted by Leonid Brezhnev: Because it was not part of the USSR during the 1920s, Bassarabia remained undeveloped in comparison with its Soviet counterparts. Hence, rapid collectivization and sovietization followed the Second World War. Although there were efforts to cultivate a Moldovan film culture in this period—Russian-language films continued to be subtitled in Romanian, the government published soviet newsreels focusing on Moldova, etc.—the cinematic situation remained stagnant until the 1950s.
1952-1970
On April 26, 1952, after much planning, the USSR Ministry of Cinematography created the Documentary Film Studio in Chişinău. During the first year two documentaries, Kodry and Moldovan Cannery appeared. However, these films, like those of the MASSR, lacked a distinctly Moldovan identity. The directors working in Moldova at this point were from Moscow and Odessa, in part because there were no trained Moldovan film professionals. Between 1952 and 1957, six documentaries were screened.
Afterwards, more Moldovan filmmakers began to participate in local productions, which caused the MSSR to take an increased interest in the state's role in developing a national film culture. To that end, on January 24, 1957, the MSSR Council of Ministers renamed the national film studio the "Studio for Fiction Movies and Chronicle Documentaries from Chişinău," also known as "Moldova-Film". Moldova-Film was far more productive than its predecessor. Funded by the State, Moldova-Film turned out 160 feature films, 1,500 documentaries and educational shorts, and over 100 animated films between 1957 and 1992. A few years later, in 1967, the MSSR founded Telefilm Chișinău, which, like Moldova-Film, received state funding and was similarly productive, producing over 300 documentaries, music videos, and telefilms during its existence.
It was during this period that many notable Moldovan filmmakers began receiving training at VGIK in Moscow and returning to Moldova to shoot films in their home country. This allowed Moldovan cinema to develop a distinct identity. During Khruschev's thaw, which ushered increased liberties in artistic expression, Moldovan filmmakers such as Emil Loteanu and Valeriu Gagiu produced films which comprised the “Moldovan Poetic Film,” a genre which fused realism with romance and enjoyed wide appeal in the USSR.
However, as in the rest of the Soviet republics, the state exercised a considerable influence in the content of these films, and with the rise of Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary came a resurgence of official censorship. Socialist Realism, once de rigueur under Stalin’s leadership, became, again, the artistic model for film professions; and critiques of Soviet history were vehemently disfavored by party leaders. For instance, Valeriu Gagiu’s A Taste of Bread (1966), about Moldovan resistance during Stalin’s tight-fisted agricultural collectivization policies after the Second World War, elicited outrage from party leaders, despite the film’s enthusiastic reception at film festivals. Hence, in keeping with the state’s systematic suppression of Moldovan cinema and culture, the Central Committee of the Moldovan Communist Party banned the film in 1970. Other Moldovan films suffered similar fates.
1970-1990
During the post-Thaw era of the 1970s, characterized by stagnation, studios continued to curtail artistic freedoms, though there were a few artistic successes at this time, such as Emil Loteanu’s Lăutarii (1972) and Gypsies Are Found near Heaven (1976). But by the 1980s, perestroika and glasnost occasioned a resurgence of artistic freedom and impressive Moldovan films, like Valeriu Jereghi’s Iona (1987), Gheorghe Urschi’s Whoever Swears, He Pays (1989), and Victor Bucătaru’s Crucifix (1990).
From Independence to the Present After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the transition to a market economy, Moldova’s film industry faced significant challenges. Directors and producers, many of whom were graduates of Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, found themselves without state-organized productions. Moldova-Film studio struggled to adapt, and most of its staff had to pursue other professions. Over the next three decades, the studio produced only three fiction feature films: Patul lui Procust (2001), Jana (2004), and Lupii și Zeii (2009).
In the early 1990s, directors Vlad Druc and Mircea Chistruga created two parable films, Cheamă-i, Doamne înapoi and Mâine iar va răsări soarele. Around the same time, a series of documentaries highlighting historical figures such as Dimitrie Cantemir, Ștefan cel Mare, and Mihai Eminescu were also produced, reflecting a focus on national identity during a period of transition.[6]
The 1990s also saw the emergence of private film studios, which adapted more easily to the market economy. These studios produced short films, documentaries, and other audiovisual works independently. The first feature-length fiction film produced without state funding was Nunta în Basarabia (2010), a Moldova–Romania–Luxembourg co-production led by OWH Studio.
In 2022, the film Carbon premiered, achieving unprecedented success both locally and internationally. As of 2024, it remains the most successful Moldovan film.[7]
Filmography
In 1957, the first fiction comedy film was called Cînd omul nu-i la locul lui (When the man is not himself) after a script written by Ion Druta.
In 1968, the first cartoon film, The Goat with Three Kids, was released, a film inspired by Ion Creanga's fairy-tale with the same title. In 1972, the satirical series Usturici appeared.
Between 1952 and 1982, 120 fiction movies, 800 documentaries, 750 editions of the cinema magazine Soviet Moldova, 40 editions of Usturici and 40 cartoons were filmed at the Moldova-Film studio. It also dubbed 12 fiction movies and 70 short stories annually by the end of the 1980s.
A cinema was built in the beginning of the 1950s in the center of Chişinău, which is now part of the Moldovan "Patria" chain.
International recognition
The first internationally acclaimed success was the film of Moldovan producer Mihail Kalik - Lullaby (Russian: Колыбельная), released in 1960 at Moldova-Film studios. The movie was awarded the "Prize for Participation" at the international cinema competition at the Locarno International Film Festival, bringing attention to the emergent Moldovan film industry.
Another international success was Man Is Walking After the Sun (Man Is Following the SunRussian: Человек идет за солнцем), written by Valeriu Gagiu and Mihail Kalik. The world press compared this movie to the Albert Lamorisse movie Le Ballon Rouge, where, just as in the Moldovan movie, the main hero was a little boy. Vadim Derbenev, the cameraman, was awarded the special jury diploma at the International Cinema Festival in Helsinki for his work.
Another one of the first Moldovan films was the Ataman of Codru (Russian: Атаман кодр), which enjoyed success in Asia and Latin America. The viewers called the movie Ataman Kadyr.
The Moldovan breakthrough in the world's cinema industry was a film written by Ion Druţă and producer and cameraman Vadim Derbenev - Last Month of Autumn (Russian: Последний месяц осени). The film received prizes at the Mar del Plata Film Festival, including the "Sympathy Prize of Viewers". Evgueniy Lebedev was awarded the main prize of the festival - the "Big Southern Cross" - in the best male role nomination. La Nación described the film as a "remarkably beautiful work". La Prensa wrote "This film, amongst all the mess that flooded the cinema world invites us to the sources of the true reachess of life". Besides appraisal in Argentina, the movie was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966. At the International Film Festival Kino Pavasaris in Vilnius, the director Vadim Derbenev won "Best Production". However, in Vilnius, the film was awarded only the second main film prize, the first place being taken by Vytautas Žalakevičius's film Nobody Wanted to Die (Russian: Никто не хотел умирать).
Lăutarii by Emil Loteanu (producer Vitaliy Kalashnikov, composer Eugen Doga) was a success, particularly in Italy. The movie received four prizes, including the "Prize of Viewers' Sympathy" and the second main prize "Silver Shell". Norwegian newspaper Arbeiterbladet compared the Moldovan movie to the Broadway musical The Sound of Music. Czech weekly Film a Divadlo wrote "Every nation expresses to the best its deepest feelings, but the Moldovan one did it the best". In 1975, the movie won in the category of "Best Foreign Film", leaving behind traditional Hollywood productions. During the week of Soviet Cinema in Naples, the film was awarded the "Silver Nymph".
Very few films have been made in Moldova since independence: the government has failed to protect its domestic industry and funding is rare (save for occasional co-productions). The country also has the world's second-lowest cinema attendance rate.[8]
Cartoons
The animation movies produced at Moldova-Studios reach an international audience. The cartoon Haiduc, produced by Leonid Gorokhov and Yuriy Katsap, with scenario written by Vlad Druc, was awarded the Grand-Prix of the Cannes Film Festival in the cartoon category.
The cinema of the Soviet Union includes films produced by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history, albeit they were all regulated by the central government in Moscow. Most prolific in their republican films, after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, and, to a lesser degree, Lithuania, Belarus and Moldavia. At the same time, the nation's film industry, which was fully nationalized throughout most of the country's history, was guided by philosophies and laws propounded by the monopoly Soviet Communist Party which introduced a new view on the cinema, socialist realism, which was different from the one before or after the existence of the Soviet Union.
The history of Moldova spans prehistoric cultures, ancient and medieval empires, and periods of foreign rule and modern independence.
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic or Moldavian SSR, also known as the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, Moldovan SSR, Soviet Moldavia, Soviet Moldova, or simply Moldavia or Moldova, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on 2 August 1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on 28 June of that year, and parts of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous Soviet republic within the Ukrainian SSR.
The Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, shortened to Moldavian ASSR, was an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian SSR between 12 October 1924 and 2 August 1940, encompassing the modern territory of Transnistria as well as much of the present-day Podilsk Raion of Ukraine. It was an artificial political creation inspired by the Bolshevik nationalities policy in the context of the loss of larger Bessarabia to Romania in April 1918. In such a manner, the Bolshevik leadership tried to radicalize pro-Soviet feelings in Bessarabia with the goal of setting up favorable conditions for the creation of a geopolitical "place d'armes" (bridgehead), in an attempt to execute a breakthrough in the direction of the Balkans by projecting influence upon Romanian Bessarabia, which would eventually be occupied and annexed in 1940 after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Moldovenism is a term used to describe the political support and promotion of a Moldovan identity and culture, including a Moldovan language, independent from those of any other ethnic group, the Romanians in particular. It is primarily used as a pejorative by the opponents of such ideas as part of the wider controversy over ethnic and linguistic identity in Moldova.
Anti-Romanian sentiment, also known as Romanophobia is hostility, hatred towards, or prejudice against Romanians as an ethnic, linguistic, religious, or perceived ethnic group, and it can range from personal feelings of hatred to institutionalized, violent persecution.
Emil Loteanu was a Moldovan and Soviet film director born in what is now Moldova. He moved to Moscow in his early life. His best known films are Lăutarii, Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven, A Hunting Accident and Anna Pavlova.
The history of Gagauzia dates back to ancient times. The larger area, known as Bessarabia, previously the eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia, was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812. The Gagauz have been ruled by the Russian Empire (1812–1917), Romania, the Soviet Union, and Moldova.
Where Has Love Gone? is a 1980 Soviet musical drama film written and directed by Valeriu Gagiu starring Sofia Rotaru as well as Valeriu Gagiu and Evgueny Menishov. The movie features songs performed by Sofia Rotaru, sequence of substantial dialogues. The setting includes Moldavian landscape and countryside life as well as Black Sea coast, Chişinău and Odesa.
The mass media in Moldova refers to mass media outlets based in the Republic of Moldova. Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The Constitution of Moldova guarantees freedom of speech. As a country in transition, Moldova's media system is under transformation.
Valeriu Gagiu was a Soviet and Moldovan film director, producer and screenwriter.
Eugen Doga is a Moldovan composer. He has made significant contributions to various forms of music during his career.
Svetlana Andreevna Toma (Russian: Светлана Андреевна Тома, born Svetlana Andreevna Fomichyova is a Moldovan-Russian and Soviet actress. She debuted at the Moldova-Film studio in 1966. She worked in the Soviet Union. She is the mother of the actress Irina Lachina.
Valeriu Jereghi is a Moldovan film director and screenwriter, the member of the Union of Cinematographers of Moldova and Russia since 1978, “MAESTRU IN ARTE”.
Saint Lazarus cemetery is a large cemetery in Chișinău in Moldova. It is 2,000,000 square metres in area, and has 250,000 graves.
Gheorghi Agadjanean is a Moldovan film director and producer, and a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Moldova.
The Moldovan resistance during World War II opposed Axis-aligned Romania and Nazi Germany, as part of the larger Soviet partisan movement. The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), presently Moldova, had been created in August 1940 after a Soviet annexation, and liberated by Romania during Operation Barbarossa. Moldovan resistance straddled across a new administrative border: in 1941–1944, Bessarabia was reincorporated within Romania as a semi-autonomous governorate, while areas across the Dnister were administered into a separate Transnistria Governorate. Shortly after the German–Romanian invasion of June–July 1941, the Communist Party of Moldavia (PCM) ordered the creation of a partisan network. The order was largely ineffective in creating an organized movement due to the rapid disintegration of Soviet territorial structures in Bessarabia. Some early organizers opted to abandon their posts, and Soviet attempts to infiltrate experienced partisans across the front line were often annihilated by the Special Intelligence Service. Nevertheless, partisan formations were still able to stage large-scale attacks on the Romanian infrastructure, at Bender and elsewhere. While Romanian documents identified categories of locals influenced by communist ideas as a passive component of the resistance, various modern commentators point to the overall unpopularity of communism in Bessarabia as accounting for the movement's marginality.
Culai Neniu was a Moldovan folklorist, dramatist, and schoolteacher. Of a Bessarabian Bulgarian background, he left the Kingdom of Romania to settle in the Soviet Union, making his way into the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR). He published several volumes of "Moldavian" folklore, generally professional in nature, but also tinged by the effects of Soviet historiography. With Ekaterina Lebedeva, Neniu put out in 1935 the anthology Cîntece poporane moldovenești, noted as the only work of its kind to coincide with the Latinization of Soviet scripts. The collection was criticized in Romania for excluding religious folklore, but was also in contradiction with the MASSR's state ideology. This resulted in Neniu's execution by the NKVD, four years after publication.
Dmitrii or Dumitru Petrovici Milev was a Bessarabian-born short-story writer and communist militant, active in the Soviet Union's Moldavian Autonomous Republic (MASSR). During World War I, he served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, but embraced Bolshevik ideology around the time of the October Revolution; he was strongly opposed to Greater Romania, and, after the Romanian–Bessarabian unification, made his way into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was a cradle for Moldovenism and the MASSR. Though originating from a community of Bessarabian Bulgarians, Milev identified with the Moldavian (Moldovan) ethnicity, which he viewed as distinct from the Romanians. More controversially, he advocated for a "Moldavian language", which he used in his contributions to proletarian literature—and which later scholarship regarded as "gibberish".
Claudia Cobizev was a Soviet realist sculptor from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Known for the sensitivity she introduced to her soviet realist works, many of her sculptures and reliefs are held in the National Museum of Fine Arts, Chișinău.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
