Reminiscences – a space of memory (Based on the film Childhood Memories by Elisabeta Bostan)

Abstract

Ion Creangă’s “Childhood Memories”, the most complex and significant work of the classic of Romanian literature, has so far known a single screening, that of the director Elisabeta Bostan from Romania. The film, with the same title, highlights a landscape as authentic as possible of the time, morals, customs and traditions and reflects the national identity. Or else, the memories of the writer, the main character of the film, about his childhood, his native village, villagers, etc., remain a living expression of the time. The drama organically combines two timeframes and spaces: that of Nică’s childhood, spent in the picturesque landscapes of Humulești, and the second that of the writer Ion Creangă, who listed his memories in the “bojdeuca (hut)” from Țicău. The director remains faithful to Creanga’s text, to the same colorful language full of expressions characteristic of Moldovan speech, and creates a universe similar to that of the mid-nineteenth century. The film Memories from Childhood (1965), considered by critics to be the “bridgehead of screening”, remained “in the English Academy and the Los Angeles Museum of the Arts – as a reference film in the field of screenings”.