Masterclass: ALEXANDRU SOLOMON - Memory Staging And The Documentary Film

Making documentaries is – often, if not by all means - a form of digging into the past and an exercise of reconstructing memory. This is even more obvious when one has to reanimate events, characters or places. How does one deal with the tension between the present-day filming and the reconstruction of the past? And how can one reinvent reality with documentary means when absence is stronger than the present? The past as we saw ithas a shape and a message. We need this on film.

Explore these issues together with Alexandru Solomon, starting from excerpts from some of his films.

After graduating the Camera Department of the Film School in Bucharest, Alexandru Solomon started making documentaries in 1993. Meanwhile he has been pursuing his career as director of photography for fiction films. His interest in multimedia, developed during a residence at the University of California at San Diego (1996) materialized in the conception and production of several interactive cultural CD-ROM’s with the Visual Arts Foundation. (www.fav.ro ). He has directed more than a dozen documentaries. (and photographed most of these). His films are always mixing genres, using his visual and experimental skills. They have been screened and awarded in festivals around Europe and the US. He has been involved in researching, line-producing and putting together documentary co-productions with the UK, Canada, France and Germany. Former collaborations have been broadcasted by the BBC, Channel 4, Arte or CBC. He has been teaching at the Film School and within the Arts Academy in Bucharest and he is a member of the European Documentary Network.