Film makers request to reorganise Moldova-Film Company

A group of 12 Moldovan well-known film makers seeks to change the juridical form of “Moldova-Film” JSC (MF), to revise the Studios’ personnel policy, requesting that Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) provide assistance and that the monopoly on government contracts be stopped, Info-Prim Neo reports. During a news conference held on Wednesday, March 21, the film makers Vlad Druc, Mircea Chistruga, Valeriu Jereghi, and Dumitru Olarescu said they addressed a petition to the management of MF and MCT, describing the deplorable situation of the Moldovan film making. The relations between the Union of Film Makers and MF have degenerated into a big fight, kept up, according to Druc, by the MF management. The cited sources say that MF is at present involved in more than one lawsuit with the film makers and journalists that have been critical of MF and the Studios’ production, which according to film makers, is cheap and undermines the country’s image. Vlad Druc says that pros and amateurs have changed roles –professionals are not allowed to movies, while unprofessionals “are shooting horrible productions” using public money. However, they are not asked by relevant authorities how the tax payers’ money was spent and what kind of “movie masterpieces” Moldova can be “proud of”. Druc says that, as a member of the Cinematography Council of MCT, he attended on Tuesday a meeting, during which there was discussed about the allocation of several million lei for a film without a script and an anonymous director. Referring to the MF management’s statements, according to which several films were screened at the Paris Festival, director Valeriu Jereghi said there is no such festival. As he states, producer Valentin Todercan, the Studios’ director Ion Siman, listed by the Court of Audit in a report concerning embezzlement cases at the National Opera House, a former MP and the son of a dignitary made thousands of copies of the films shot in the previous years and sold them, according to contracts, for 100 dollars a piece. Jereghi claims that a single movie screening on TV channels like NTV or RTR costs 120,000 dollars, while they had repeatedly showed Moldovan films. Director Mircea Chistruga and playwright Vlad Olarescu say that the documentary films made in recent years at MF are occasional, while the real professionals from Moldova succeeded to promote the Kazakhstani and Tajikistani cinematography. The biggest part of those 600 employees working at MF were fired, and many of them sued the MF management. The film makers have denied the rumours that the Union of Film Makers wants the MF privatised, stating that they plead for investments in this Studios, which remained with several buildings and tens of leasing firms. The letter signed by film makers also reads that “the delay in reforming the MF Studios, the conservation of the present situation, where the non-professionalism prevails, will make impossible the rehabilitation of cinematography of Moldova, an art that must be one of the calling cards of the national culture”. The statement was also signed by such masters of film as Mihai Volontir, Boris Conunov, Vasile Brescanu, Victor Bucataru etc.