Alexandru Solomon and Kino Kombat
I just discovered that it is 20 years ago that I met Alexandru Solomon in Bucharest. My wife worked at DR (Danish Public Broadcaster) and I was at the National Film Board of Denmark. We bought two of his visual experiments/short films for broadcast and non-theatrical distribution. Titles: ”Shriek into the Ear-Drum” (1993) and ”2 x 5” (1993), pretty wild stuff… would never pass through today’s overall filmic normalization, well maybe at art museums and galleries.
Times have changed, Solomon is now an internationally renowned and committed documentarian, who has made several films on politics in his country. His films are made through hifilm, the company of his wife Ada, who produces award-winning fiction films on an international level.
Back to why I am writing this: Kino Kombat is online and for free until March 16, 5 films are available from the current programme of the 7th edition of One World Romania International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
You can read more about the films on DocAlliance website, see below, where there also is an interview with Alexandru Solomon, who is the director of the festival. He gives the following answer to ”Why Kino Kombat?”:
“Each year we express the focus of the festival’s current edition through a slogan. In Romania, in the past year we have seen a fresh civic commitment expressing itself in the streets, through protests and gatherings, but also through the arts. We are premiering two Romanian films that portray these demonstrations and we are exhibiting the drawings of Dan Perjovschi, one of the most important artists of our time, who reflected and nourished these protests. “Kino Kombat” stands as recognition of our double pledge – to human rights and to documentary cinema, as one of the best tools to promote human rights in a creative way. The Romanian version of this slogan is “Cine-luptă”, meaning cine(matic)-fight, and our central picture for the 7th edition is the camera-weapon. A weapon that is honest, intelligent and non-violent. The documentaries we select and promote are usually committed to a certain cause but they are not politically correct, they are provocative and have multiple layers, because they are also cinematic.” BRAVO!
