7/26/10 9:59 AM
indd 1
a film by Silviu Purcărete
PALILULA
SOMEWHERE
> Company profilE
Libra Film is an independent
film/TV production company
founded in 1994, having a focus
on producing feature films, but
shorts and documentaries as well.
In 2004, Libra produced the
award-winning documentary
Great Communist Bank Robbery,
by Alexandru Solomon. In 2006
Libra was behind the local box-
Palilula set
office hit Love Sick, by Tudor
Giurgiu, which had its world
premiere at Berlinale, in Panorama.
Libra was also the Romanian
partner for Kornél Mundruczó’s
Cannes 2008 competition film
Delta, awarded with FIPRESCI
award and then co-produced
the directorial debut of actress
Fanny Ardant, Ashes and Blood.
IN
Most recent title, Katalin Varga,
by Peter Strickland was named
the European Discovery of the
Year at the 2009 European
Film Awards and awarded with
a Silver Bear at Berlinale 2009.
Lineup of 2010–2011 projects
consist of Somewhere in Palilula,
by Silviu Purcărete, and The Bear
by Dan Chisu.
BrosuraPalilula.
www.librafilm.net
office@librafilm.net
F +40 21 326 02 60
T +40 21 326 64 80
023984, Sector 2, Bucharest, Romania
Str. Popa Soare Nr. 52, ap. 4
Libra Film Productions
Contact
> SYNOPSIS
Romania, the 60s. Serafim, a fresh graduate of
Medical School, is brought by a gloomy whim of
destiny to the town of Palilula. Nowhere, that is.
Palilula is a ghost town, lost in the middle of the
Vallahian plain. A quarantine area, a sanatorium,
improbable hospital, a gynecological clinic in a
settlement where no child is born. A community
of Italians who forgot their language, but not
the nostalgia for their canzonettas. Italians with
Danubian taste and disorientation.
The young doctor Serafim will not get to practice
his profession as a pediatrician, in this childless
town. He will be drowning in the sweet and poisoned
honey of the place, like a fly caught by a frog.
 > SOMEWHERE IN PALILULA
Running time: 150 min
Shooting format: High Definition (RED)
Delivery format: 35 mm
Original language: Romanian
Genre: Black Comedy
Writer and director: Silviu
Purcărete
Producer: Tudor Giurgiu
Cast: Dimeny Aron, George
Mihăiţă, Răzvan Vasilescu,
Constantin Chiriac, Horaţiu
Mălăele, Ofelia Popii
Cinematographer: Adrian
Silișteanu
Music: Vasile Șirli
Set design: Helmut Sturmer,
Dragoș Buhagiar
Editor: Cătălin F. Cristuţiu
> DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
This film speaks about an era.
About a place where the essence
of this era is condensed, twisted,
squeezed into; Palilula, this
poetical corner of the Balkans,
inhabited by an imbecile yet
charming population, isolated for
eternity in a rhythm of drunken-
ness, feasting, orgies, and carrying
with it the myths, the legends,
the phantasms, the anecdotes,
the scandals that define it as a
perpetual group.
It is a nostalgic look at the 60’s
and 70’s and, for those who did not
experience the époque, an encoun-
ter with the absurdity of that era.
Changes of political regimes,
deaths, fires and floods, none of
these major, tremendous changes
of the outside world, do not disturb
at all the inhabitants of Palilula.
And no political regime is
stronger than the purely Roma-
nian inclination towards mockery.
Laughed at, ignored, tickled by the
belly- button, exorcised in such
way, even communist dictatorship
becomes a caricature.
The characters of the film are
presented in moments of their live
and even if sometimes extremely
brief, these moments describe
them individually and define them
as members of the group they
belong to, deprived of any chance
to escape and lacking any aspira-
tion to do so.
Alternatively agitated or lazy,
happy or melancholic, they are al-
ways there, together in the center
of the world, on the oleander
terrace, at the hospital or at the
Boema hotel.
BrosuraPalilula.indd 2
Production company: Libra Film
Co-produced by: Ministry of
Culture’s Cinema Studio, Generic
Audiovizual (GAV), Tandem Film,
Hai-Hui Entertainment
Supported by: Romanian National
Film Center (CNC), Balkan Fund
Co-financed by: Romanian
Television (TVR), Zenith Media,
OMD, Starcom, Mindshare, Media
Concept Store, Initiative Media,
Splendid Thematics
Developed with the support of the
MEDIA program of the European
Union
Their stories run at various
rhythms, as do the images of
buildings, the landscapes, the
lights, the faces (human and
animal), sometimes broad and
diluted, other times quick and
merry; like in the silent movies
at times, in hilarious, climactic,
parodical, ironical sequences.
The story is structured by sea-
sons, the scenes represent extracts
of the springs, summers, autumns
and winters collection of Palilula.
But there is also a fifth season as
well, the season of the frogs.
Music is a crucial element. The
gipsy taraf is always there, almost
everywhere, ready to act, to inter-
act, to point out the sensation of
continuous and inexplicable feast,
of self- forgetting, of freeing, of
evasion from the real. The cymbal
is the key- instrument, the one
that gives the rhythm of the party,
of life. Its music fades into the
music of Verdi’s opera, sung by the
characters with vague, old Italian
roots, the arias and choirs - mo-
ments of collective out breaking.
The sound universe of Palilula also
comprises the cry of the bird from
afar, the quacking of the frogs, the
symphonic snoring, the dripping
of the water drops from the eaves,
in spring, and the sinister sound of
the engine siren.
Immorality and melancholy
Palilula is nowhere, i.e. everywhere.
It is a small island in the centre of
the Vallachian plain, made of the
dust of a distant planet.
Over there, the physical laws
of the Earth are not as rigorous as
Budget approx: 1.9 M Euro
Needed for completion: 300.000
Euro
Post-production calendar:
• sound postproduction: (ADR’s,
foley) – July-August 2010
• final edit: October 2010
• sound design: Fall 2010
• visual FX: July 2010 – February
2011
• sound mixing: March 2011
Delivery date: April 2011
they normally are,
Over there, one can never know
if people lie, dream or really live.
As in “The Exterminating
Angel”, one can enter Palilula, but
can never leave. Over there, the
“exterminating angel” is called
immorality and melancholy.
In Palilula, the animals, be they
frogs or goats, lie and rave as
do the humans- and they do live
together in a spirit of brotherly
solidarity.
In Palilula, the dead are as
merry as the living, as talkative
and as fond of the bottle as them.
In Palilula no device built by
a civilized human brain will ever
work. As for the local engineering,
that truly challenges any kind of
rationality.
Nobody works in Palilula, but all
cram their paunches.
No child is born in Palilula.
Young or old, all adults there have
never stepped over the threshold
of childhood: Palilula is a ground
for retarded playing.
Almost all Palilulans are Italian.
But nobody can recall how they
got there. Anyway, among the ever
thirsty and the frogs, the ancient
courtesans, and the surviving
aristocrats, the perfectly healthy
patients and the sick doctors, the
Communist Party has made it’s en-
try- a killjoy, which reminds us that,
even in Palilula, time can ravage.
Palilula is the Inferno with exha-
lations of Paradise.
Palilula is Paradise consumed in
the flames of the Inferno.
Irony gives noblesse and compro-
mises, at the very same moment
> SILVIU Purcărete
BIO
Silviu Purcărete is one of the
most appreciated European
theatre directors. He has over 30
years experience and he signed
memorable plays specially in
National Theatre of Craiova or
recently in Sibiu. He’s living now
in France having also French
citizenship.
Member with personal title of
Europe’s Theatres Union, he won
Golden Globe Peter Brook Prize
for Best Theatre Director in 1995
and Artistic Excellency Award
of Hamada Foundation (Edinburgh
International Festival 1991)
His productions have won many
awards and great critical acclaim
both in Romania and abroad. In
1996 Purcărete became Director of
the Centre Dramatique National de
Limoges for whom his productions
have included ‘Oresteia’, ‘Three
Sisters’ and ‘Don Juan’.
Opera credits include ‘La
Boheme’ (Essen), ‘Parsifal’
(Scottish Opera coproduction
with WNO), Donizetti’s ‘Roberto
Devereux’ (Wiener Staatsoper)
and Rameau’s ‘Castor et Pollux’
(Opera Bonn).
His work has been seen
extensively in the UK and includes
‘The Decameron’, ‘Phaedra’ and
Aeschylus’ ‘Danaides’ (Glasgow),
‘Oresteia’ (Lyric Hammersmith),
‘Ubu Rex’ (Edinburgh International
Festival) and ‘The Tempest’
(Nottingham Playhouse).
In 2005 Purcărete directed
and in equal shares. It plays a
major role in the description of
the tender, peaceful and care-
less atmosphere of this isolated
universe. The sequences of this
world are repetitive and seem
immobile, even if the elements are
presented in a very dynamic, ex-
aggerated, shocking and intense
manner.
My vision is to focus on this
monstrous experience in a serene,
detached, floating, supremely
ironical way. That is the point of
view from which the characters of
this film relate to the surrounding,
yet infinitely remote reality.
For me, the fundamental
themes of the film would be:
1) First of all a question: what
heritage do I leave to my son,
‘Scapino’ or ‘The Trickster’ at In 2009 his “Faust”
Chichester Festival Theatre. performance was one of the
In 2006, ‘The Twelfth Night’, hits of prestigious Edinburgh
a National Theatre of Craiova Theatre Festival, main actress
production, was presented during Ofelia Popii being awarded
the Bath Shakespeare Festival, with the Angel Award for the
and in 2007, Purcărete directed Mephistopheles role.
Eugene Ionesco’s ‘Macbett’ for the “Somewhere in Palilula” will be
Royal Shakespeare Company. his first feature film.
> Quotes from foreign press
“Silviu arranges the stage like a master chef might check the set-
tings and arrangements for an important banquet...”
– Dick McCaw (Royal Holloway College)
“Magnificent Magic”
– The Irish Times (on Les Danaides)
“Purcărete… is a name we will not be able to forget.”
– New York Post (on Les Danaides)
“Stunning talent from Romania”
– Observer (on Phaedra)
“Distinguished by their peculiarly hypnotic fusion of sound and
spectacle, his productions tend to have the seamless intensity and
archetypal quality of a dream...”
– Paul Taylor
“Humain profondément humain, avec la pudeur et la démesure
de l’artiste, avec la candeur et la rouerie du paysan, avec l’humor
et le piquant de l’érudit, Silviu n’a acucun mal à convaincre ses
collaborateurs: il ne demande que ce dont il a besion pour réaliser
les chimères qui l’habitent”.
– Alain Garlan (Director of Theatre de L’Union)
“Quite the most blisteringly stunning theatrical experience of this
(or, appropriately enough, any other) life’
– The Observer on Faust
“Most overwhelming sense of evil I’ve experienced in a theatre…”
– The Times on Faust
except a goat hoof? Algerian, Bosnian, or Columbian –
Therefore, the message struc- I mean a person emerging from a
tures around the theme of herit- minor culture- can be nothing else
age and memory, two of the most but the story itself.
talked- upon themes of our days,
2) Then comes the answer, The story is the only one that can
banal and very much spread- ennoble the filth. Reality doesn’t
around: the heritage, the only matter any more, when told. Even
heritage that I, as a Romanian, more, reality doesn’t even exist,
or a citizen of Burkina- Fasso, an unless it is told . . .
7/26/10 9:59 AM