Une féérie musicale?: les coproductions cinématographiques entre la République Socialiste Roumaine et l’Union Soviétique

Abstract

This article brings forward an overview of the Romanian-URSS co-productions, in an attempt to explain how film functioned as an instrument of cultural diplomacy between the two countries and between the East and the West. While Romania has been involved in numerous cultural exchanges and in many other forms of cinematographic collaboration with the Soviet Union, this analysis focuses only on the films whose artistic responsibility had been entrusted to a Romanian filmmaker. Five films were thus identified, including a war film made in the 1960s and four musicals and/or films for children and youth made during the 1970s and 1980s. The fact that all of them put music more or less in the foreground appears as no coincidence. This option responded to a strategy oriented towards the Western public, and towards celebrating a Romanian-Soviet friendship cleansed of political tensions. Nevertheless, in a cinematography where politicized films were the main priority, such co-productions played a significant role in the shaping of a popular culture and of a cinema of entertainment.