Part of the new series Echoes and Distortions: Romanian Experimental Film and Video Art, organised by the Romanian Cultural Institute in partnership with e-flux Screening Room, the screening+talk event introduces American audiences to a vital yet historically underrepresented field: Romanian experimental film and video art. The series begins with a focus on Ion Grigorescu, a central figure of the Romanian neo-avantgarde, whose work emerged under the constraints of the communist regime and remained largely unseen until after 1989.
Working in relative isolation, Grigorescu developed a singular practice across film, performance, and photography, in which the camera becomes both witness and interlocutor. His works—often staged in the privacy of his studio or in peripheral landscapes—use the artist’s own body as primary material, probing states of tension, vulnerability, and self-confrontation while encoding subtle forms of political dissent. Across these moving image works, tightly constructed actions give way to reflections on perception, doubling, and mediation, culminating in staged dialogues that test the limits of representation under authoritarianism.
The evening opens with a keynote address by MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci, titled Ion Grigorescu — Cinema at the Limits of the Self, followed by a screening of eight key works—Balta Albă, Aquatic, Boxing, Male/Female, Dialogue with President Ceaușescu, Family, Start, and Sleep, selected by Andreiana Mihail who has worked closely with Ion Grigorescu over the last 17 years. A panel discussion with Roxana Marcoci, Amy Bryzgel, and Lukas Brasiskis will expand on Grigorescu’s legacy within both Eastern European and global experimental contexts, with Romanian director Andreiana Mihail joining online. The program concludes with the documentary Boxing with Myself (dir. Andreiana Mihail, edited by Dana Bunescu and with original score by Cezar Stănciulescu), which offers an intimate portrait of the artist’s life and practice.
Presented in partnership with Gregor Podnar Gallery and Kinotopia, the evening sets the stage for the series as a whole, foregrounding practices shaped by constraint, experimentation, and critical reflection, and tracing how Romanian artists have engaged the moving image as a space of resistance, inquiry, and transformation.
Echoes and Distortions: Romanian Experimental Film and Video Art is a series curated by Andreea Drăghicescu, Romanian creative producer and cultural manager at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, in collaboration with Lukas Brasiskis, Curator of Video and Film at e-flux, that foregrounds the crucial role experimental moving image practices have played in shaping Romania’s visual culture, particularly under and after the constraints of the communist regime. In a context where artistic expression was often surveilled or restricted, experimental film and video became vital tools for introspection, coded dissent, and formal innovation, contributing significantly to the broader history of Romanian avant-garde and contemporary art. The series traces this lineage from pioneering figures such as Ion Grigorescu, Geta Brătescu, Andrei Ujică, kinema ikon, Lia Perjovschi, or Decebal Scriba—artists who expanded the boundaries of image-making through performance, conceptual strategies, and film—toward a younger generation including artists like Rostopasca, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Mircea Cantor, Radu Jude, Adina Pintilie, Alex Mirutziu, Apparatus 22, and many others who continue to explore the moving image as a space for critical reflection and experimentation. By bringing together historical and contemporary perspectives, the program highlights how Romanian experimental film and video art has persistently negotiated issues of identity, politics, embodiment, and perception, establishing itself as a vital and evolving field within both national and international art histories.
