“Now Is the Time to Include the Films Produced by the Alexandru Sahia Documentary Studio in Our Conversations About the Communist Past.” An Interview with Adina Brãdeanu

Abstract

An interview with researcher Adina Brădeanu (University of Oxford) around the topic of curating film heritage. Since 2014, Brădeanu has curated a DVD series (SAHIA VINTAGE) which rediscovers the output and the production culture of the Alexandru Sahia studio (1950-1990), which was socialist Romania’s only studio specialized in documentary production. Brădeanu discusses the relevance of this collection, the curatorial process behind the DVDs, and the meaning of the term “vintage” in the context of a project that invites reflection on Romania’s socialism as lived experience.

Keywords

• film archive
• curation
• film studio
• documentary cinema
• romanian cinema
• collective memory