today starts the 10th edition of tiff!
most probably the biggest thing that has happened to the romanian film industry in a long time, tiff is a friendly snow-ball kind of event: it lures film people and audiences with a huge range of events and gets everybody talking, bonding and exchanging telephone numbers.
a regular tiff day starts early, with (ofc) a film. the rest of the day is spent running between the venues on the streets strewn with members of the tiff badge wearing tribe. you grab some lunch or a drink with people you only see in cluj, even if you all live for the rest of the year in bucharest. you gasp when spotting some film hero of yours and you go over to bow down to his under-rated genius and end up having an endless talk about early jarmusch. you manage to take a quick shower and change into evening wear and you run back to the main venue for that day’s star screening. in the few free minutes, you browse the program and try to schedule tomorrow. all days end at some party or concert or dinner with old or very new friends. drinks. music. invariably, you end up going to sleep much too late. but it’s totally worth it!
concerts, exhibitions (do not miss cornel lazia’s internal sceneries!), and hundreds of films (the highlights include mike leigh’s another year, mark romanek’s never let me go, open air screenings, documentaries, 3×3, and the latest romanian productions, including catalin mitulescu’s loverboy). for the future generations of film makers and film goers: let’s go digital (18 kids will be coached in making films of their own by industry people) and educatiff (a program meant to help form the taste of the young public).
i cannot possibly cover what tiff 2011 has in store for you! you must go there and check it out for your selves and come back exhausted but happy! enjoy!
