Corneliu porumboiu biography template
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Cracking the Code: Corneliu Porumboiu
ByJordan Cronkin the July-August 2019 Issue
The Whistlers follows a police investigator (Vlad Ivanov) who ships out to the Canary Islands and gets embroiled in dirty business—which happens to involve a long-distance language consisting entirely of whistles. I talked with soft-spoken filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective; Infinite Football) in Cannes, where his feature was appearing for the first time in Competition.
A shorter, edited version of this interview appears in the July-August 2019 issue of Film Comment.
I understand that the idea for The Whistlers came to you from a television show you saw shortly after completing Police, Adjective (2009). What kept you from pursuing the subject for a movie until now, and can you talk about how the film relates to Police, Adjective?
Yes. Right away I was attracted by the language. I tried to read some things about it, and I even wrote a draft of the script,
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Originally published on Ink 19 on December 16, 2019
It was a distinct honor for me to briefly speak with director Corneliu Porumboiu at AFI Fest this year where he accompanied his latest film, the intricate comedic noir, The Whistlers (La Gomera). My adoration of Porumboiu’s work began over a decade ago after a chance screening led me to his impressively dry and satirical debut feature, 12:08 East of Bucharest, and shortly after seeing that film, I was fortunate to have the chance to see and program a couple of his promising early short films: A Trip to the City and Liviu’s Dream, at a small festival that I co-curated in Boston. The director’s 2009 feature, Police, Adjective, the winner of the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at that year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a masterwork that creatively reflected on the after effects of the 1989 Romanian revolution, a subject of so many of Porumboiu’s subsequent films released throughout this decade.
The Whistlers,
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Bord Cadre films
Corneliu Porumboiu was born in 1975 in Vaslui. He studied film at the I.L.Caragiale University in Bucharest and received his degree in 2003. The two short films he directed that same year drew international attention: A Trip to the City (Cinéfondation’s second prize in 2004), followed by Liviu’s Dream. In his first feature spelfilm, 12:08 East of Bucharest, Porumboiu offers a very humorous view of Romania’s 1989 revolution. The film was presented in Cannes at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2006 and won the Caméra d’Or. Corneliu Porumboiu carried on subtly combining his work on cinematic form with a dissection of the Romanian society in Police, Adjective, selected for Un Certain Regard in 2009 (Jury Prize and Fipresci Prize).
Filmography
- 2019 The Whistlers
- 2018 Infinite Football (Documentary)
- 2015 Le Treasure
- 2014 The Second Game (Documentary)
- 2013 When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
- 2009 Police, Adjective
- 2006 12h08 East of Bucharest
- 2004 L