SHORT PROFILE OF THE ROMANIAN DIRECTOR ALEXANDRU MAFTEI / interview with director of the film Hello! How are you?

The name of director, scriptwriter and cinematographer Alexandru Maftei is relatively unknown, at least to Slovak cinemagoers. His bittersweet romantic comedy, Hello! How Are You?, is one of the few Romanian films not to deal with life endings. Recently it was nominated for the European Film Award, which was a big reason to talk to him briefly about his past, present and future.

You graduated from the Film and Theatre Academy in Bucharest in 1994 with graduation film Night within a Day. What was it about?

It is a story of Mrs. Georgescu who is pushing fifty and has to deal not only with her ill mother who is unable to go to the bathroom but also with her son and his girlfriend. The problem is that the girlfriend is trying to convince him to put his mother and his grandmother into an old folks’ home so that they can build their love nest. It is a realistic film in the style of Romanian new wave, only it was shot before it came to be.

Was it screened at film festivals?

It went to a number of festivals, including Clermond Ferrand 1996, Montpellier 1995, St. Petersburg 1995, Montecatini 1996, Paris 1996 or St. Denis 1996, and even won several awards, for instance Best Short Film Award at Biarritz in 1996 or Grand Prix at Dakino Bucharest in 1995 and Viewers’ Choice Award for the best film shown at Dakino in the past 20 years in 2010. The film was also broadcast by Arte TV station in 1998.

Your feature debut was Pursuing Happiness (1998), which you describe as a psychological thriller about the power of the media in the post-Communist period. How did it come to existence?

I met with an actress who had emigrated from Romania before 1989 and returned in 1996 in search of a suitable and interesting screenplay to produce her first film. She liked the synopsis I showed her and convinced a large German producer to give us 100,000 Deutschmarks. Romanian CNC did not give us a single penny because people sitting on the grant commission were too busy financing their own projects at the time. Finally, one Romanian TV station agreed to sponsor the film. It had a great potential. We acquired the absolutely best Romanian actors to ever appear in one picture together. They originally asked for quite a lot of money but eventually agreed to laughable sums. The rest of the production operated on a truly shoestring budget; for instance, we shot with a Super-16 camera. The problem came when the German producer died before we could finish the film. The said actress began to be dissatisfied with how the film was developing and she ended up leaving Romania. My relations with my friend and co-screenwriter Lucian turned so sour that we stopped talking to each other for several years. Personally, I view this film almost as a catastrophe and simultaneously almost a very decent film. After all, the state television broadcast it several times in 1998. It did not make it to cinema distribution or any film festivals. It only exists on a DVD on my bookshelf. After this experience I did not have an ambition to shoot any more films.

You did not make another film until 2010. What did you do all these years?

After Pursuing Happiness I felt that no one needed my films. Back then, Romania did not produce too many movies; I believe it did not produce a single title in 2000. So I decided to make myself useful and began to work in an advertising agency, working my way up from a regular employee to creative director. After almost 10 years I quit and began to shoot commercials. Some of them won international awards at various festivals. In 2006, I shot a documentary film titled Stephen the Great and Saint that was part of a TV series Ten Great Romanians. People could vote for the greatest Romanian of all time. Stephen the Great and Saint was elected winner of the series. After that, I directed seven out of 14 episodes of a TV serial titled Lombarzilor 8; it was a family saga from contemporary Romania. In 2007 I worked on several episodes of Romanian adaptation of one Spanish serial.

Lets us move to your latest picture, Hello! How Are You?, which is about marital stereotypes. Why did you choose this topic?

I believe that my film is rather about falling in love, about lasting of love. We always long for something we don’t have or something we believe we are lacking. Happiness is sometimes closer than we think, we only have to keep our minds and souls open. I just wanted to shoot a love story because I believe that love is the most important thing.

Did you draw inspiration from your own life?

The plot was actually inspired by a newspaper story. Two people who chat via the Internet fall in love without actually meeting. Later they find out they are already married and they file for a divorce. That was the story we proceeded from. Lia Bugnar wrote the script.

Do you think that a stereotypical marriage is one of the most rampant problems in Romania or matrimony as such?

I don’t know whether it is the most prevalent problem in Romania but it is certainly a problem that any mortal can identify with. I wanted to make a universal film that would appeal to everybody.

Your latest film is somewhat different from usual Romanian film production. Was it your ambition to fill a genre gap?

While making a film, I don’t consider marketing issues and I certainly do not have an ambition to fill any gaps in our marvellous cinema. I shoot films because I want to tell stories, in this particular case about love and betrayal. I also want viewers to enjoy my pictures, which is why I try to incorporate into them humour, poetic moments with fitting music, and so on. And I do not consider this film a romantic comedy; it is rather a bittersweet story of betrayal.

How did you finance its production?

Between 10 and 15 percent of the film’s budget was a CNC grant. The state television contributed further 15% and we got some money from HBO Romania. We raised the remaining funds from media agencies that must contribute to cinema. From the story to the premiere it took us nearly five years to make it.

Many Romanian films (e.g. Ryna, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days or How I Spent the End of the World) are about the period of the Ceausescu regime or its residues. Do you have an ambition to shoot a film on this subject in the future?

So far I have not thought about it.

What are your future plans? Are you currently working on any project?

I just finished shooting Miss Christina, a feature film inspired by a novel by Mircea Eliade. It is an amazing love story set in the 1930s. I am also planning to make a feature-length, black-humour and hopefully thought-provoking musical titled Supermarket about shopping and consumerism. The story is partly inspired by a play written by Theo Herghelegiu, female playwright and stage director who runs an independent theatre in Bucharest.

 Pavla Rachelová

(student at the Department ofAudio-Visual Studies at VŠMU.