Iron Curtain Films // Screening One : Iacob (1988)

IRON CURTAIN FILMS // SCREENING ONE
'IACOB' (1988) DIRECTED BY MIRCEA DANELIUC
INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT SCHILLING

For The Gallery of Everything's current exhibition, ACTION, CAMERA! we present IRON CURTAIN FILMS, a series of Romanian classics that have influenced the work of ION BÂRLĀDEANU. The first screening will be IACOB (1988), directed by Mircea Daneliuc.

This event has limited capacity so please RSVP to ge@gallevery.com. Food, booze and cigarettes depicted in ION BÂRLĀDEANU's collages will be served.

ABOUT THE FILM

IACOB (1988), is one of the most daring and adventurous films produced in communist Romania. Set before the communist rule in a rural village, this film was written with hindsight as a warning for the future troubles Romania would come to face. IACOB is a story of tough survival, in which the protagonist, a hardworking gold miner, risks his life daily to support his wife. Today the message is stronger than ever: will IACOB succeed to climb the ladder or fall to his doom?

IACOB was produced in 1987 and received two nominations at the 1988 European Film Awards

IRON CURTAIN FILMS : ABOUT THE SERIES

Today, Romanian cinema is all the rage, a hot ticket at international film festivals. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, a small selection of directors planted the seeds for Romania's current cinematic renaissance. Tolerated by the system, filmmakers dodged censorship through subtlety and symbolism. The films inspired an audience eager to expel frustration of living under a regime of repression.

The Gallery of Everything have worked with Romanian film buff Robert Schilling to curate a series of IRON CURTAIN FILMS which have inspired ION BÂRLĀDEANU and explore themes from the communist era.

Robert Schilling is a graduate of the National University of Theatre and Film "I.L. Caragiale”, Bucharest, Romania. He is based in the UK, working as an artist manager and executive producer, specialising in Eastern European art and culture.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Discovered at the age of 60 in his open-air studio in 2006, the majority of ION BÂRLĀDEANU's artistic career was clandestine. Describing himself as a maverick film director, he sees the images he constructs from magazine cut-outs as movie stills. Each one relates to a narrative with characters and imagined plots, his oeuvre reading like a filmography. During communist rule, BÂRLĀDEANU created increasingly risky artworks that if discovered by Romania's police or head-honchos would have resulted in an unhappy ending for this artist. The charm of his work is in the expertly dressed mise en scènes, attention to body language, one point perspectives and sense of depth transcending the static material of collage.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

ACTION, CAMERA! presents two distinct and separately curated solo shows, thematically linked by a fascination with the camera - or rather, the lack thereof. ION BÂRLĀDEANU and ALAN CONSTABLE have never been previously exhibited in Britain, where they are now represented exclusively by The Gallery of Everything.