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All hollow

www.allhollow.com

ediTor in ChiefBArnA nemeThi / barna@griffon.ro

ediTorsmAriA desmireAn / maria@griffon.ro

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AndreeA ioniTA / andreea@griffon.ro

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˘‚

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5 /

All hollow

´‚

We come in peace. Which is surprising, given the fact

that we come into a strange strange world. as a whole and

as an industry; creatives and consumers; publishers and

buyers. Somehow, the stranger and odder the ground shifted

under our feet, the faster we adapted and regained balance.

We quickly came to terms with the weird and we got used to

it. So, in time, we left ourselves at the mercy of the cynical.

Today, everywhere we look we see the cuts beneath the cover.

it’s all become a big flying rug —aladdin would be jealous—

with issues cramped and hoarded under it. miraculously, it

still flies. all of us crowded on that small rug we call creative

industries, we move forward barely touching the ground. But

at what cost? is it worth it? To be consumed by perversion

for fake rewards and strained relationships? For some time

now, our wits and minds have sharpened our tongue to call

out through the smallest of cracks and the biggest of gaps.

We criticize first, ask questions later. a nation of critics that

somehow passively accept the very precise things they dread

and continue to live with them side by side. Let’s face it: we

are all corrupted that way. i’m the first to admit that.

But above all, we are bored. So very bored. it almost makes

no sense to lift up our heads, raise our arms and actually

do something that matters, to make a contribution. not

something exceptional, life-changing-never-done-before

fictionalised nostalgia, but something merely interesting.

Just wake up and create something interesting, something

weComein PeACeBArnA nemeThi

6 /

´

that puts you out there, puts your heart on the table, for the

vultures and wolves to feed on. Bother us with something

that will tickle our minds again.

But there’s always the satus quo. Why should anyone think

otherwise? Why try? it’s hard. it’s a waste of time. Where’s

the return? Where’s the money? Why bother when no

one will appreciate or even acknowledge? But after all the

whining unleashes, while browsing through all the excuses

that ring in our minds, over all this bickering, the impulse

of intrigue emerges. The need for fascination. The desire of a

slip. Revealed in new beautiful meanings —of the same old

stories— they will want it once it’s out there.

We are the hollow men. The straw men. The empty men. We

want you to fill us, make us whole again. and we won’t stop

until we are overflowed. There have been enough excuses,

enough shout outs, enough demands for better. This magazine

is our leap of faith from the anguished neurotic bystanders

hoping for a quick fix of creative work to the trust that

you will fill us with meaning. as one little hobbit said to

mr. Gandalf: ‘i wish the ring never came to me, i wish i had

money and i worked for interview and dazed, i wish i were

surrounded by rich and talented people, i wish it were easy’.

‘So do all who live to see such times, but it’s not meant for us

to decide. all we can decide is what to do with the time that is

given to us’ said the wizard. and we have decided. We’ve gone

to print. and most importantly, we’ve made a promise never

to go back, back to the comfy shelter of good enough and

that-works-why-try-harder.

So things got well underway and we started to work. once

the veil lifted a lot of amazing things happened. We met

people, we learned things, we sweated, we hurt and we started

to see that all was not lost. We met with cristi Lupsa and

the wonderful team at DoR, who deliver, against all odds,

impeccable journalism in a country where media and news

are either ridiculous or malevolent. They write their hearts

out, issue after issue. This is also why they were the best host

for our pilot number and have our full support for anything

they ever want to try to achieve. We met stylists and designer

willing to go out on a limb with us and try something new,

experiment. We met musicians willing to risk not playing the

same chords and we met people with the joy to dance on more

than just one bitrate. We met writers and photographers

that are ready to use their tools honestly and fluently who

are eager to create.

Because in the end, that’s what it’s all about: local content.

our content. We want to build a playgound for all talented

designers and stylists out there, publish their work and ideas

that are too experimental or unfitting for today’s print. We

want to work with the other magazines, trying to push the

industry forward together. We want to talk to the doers

and makers of our creative industries and make this a place

where they can say what they truly believe, without just

answering the same rotation of boring questions. We want

this magazine to be the aggregator of beauty, fun, knowledge,

experimentation, entertainment, and above all, everything

that is interesting and relevant.

once our eyes opened we also saw a city with so much to offer.

This city i live in, this country i live in, this region i live in,

and this time i live in have plenty to give if you are not so

angry and bitter. We believe that Bucharest can be the new

hotspot for what’s interesting, creative, cool, and innovative

for the entire region. That’s why we write in english, because

very soon we will bring you what’s relevant from our neighbor

creative communities and also we proudly want to share the

local content generated here. in Bucharest. Romania.

So where is the rider? Because what we have here is his horse,

with the stamina and the nerve for the long run. We are blowing

the horn here. come and ride. Let’s join the best hearts and

minds of our creative industries and emerge together with

curated local content. put Bucharest on the map.

an elusive man once said you campaign in poetry but you

govern in prose. All hollow contains a lot of promises, a lot

of poetry. and it is required that we prove ourselves through

content and not through empty words. all that is hollow is

meant to be filled, and things must fall into place. With no

pressure and no fear. ignorance is not bliss. innocence is bliss.

it’s the prose that has to follow and we are well aware of that.

every time we’ve done something that didn’t feel right, it

ended up not being right. and this feels so right. We are the

hollow men. The straw men. The empty men. and this is how

we unfold, not with a bang but with a whimper.

weAreThehollowmen.ThesTrAwmen.TheemPTymen.

7 /

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The suCCess of VeroniCA PAsCu, one of The

mosT in-demAnd models in romAniA righT

now, is noT AT All surPrising. if you’Ve seen

Any of her work, we’re sure you were sold

And mesmerized By her BeAuTy. if you’Ve eVer

seen her in reAl life, you CAn douBle The PAin.

like mAny models, VeroniCA sTArTed her

CAreer As A Teen And now, AT 30, she ConTinues

To Commission AdVerTising CAmPAigns And

Be feATured on CoVers And in ediToriAls

for fAshion mAgAzines, BoTh romAniAn And

inTernATionAl. she hAs Been inVolVed in

CreATing sPeCTACulAr Volumes of imAgery;

she’s A risk TAker, A Thrill seeker, And An

hAuTe ViVAnTe.

The firsT Time we worked wiTh VeroniCA wAs

on seT for A musiC Video we did; oBViously,

she PlAyed The loVe inTeresT. no need To

sAy ThAT The whole Crew And CAsT Couldn’T

sToP looking AT her; eVery liTTle moVe she

mAde wAs gAzed AT By more ThAn 200 PeoPle. iT

wAs jAw droPPing To see her on CAmerA so we

wAnTed The sAme rAPTure for The reTinAs in

PrinT. needles To sAy, she wAs gAme.

1 0 /

photography / BArnA nemeThi

VlAd fenesAn

lusT in BlACk

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make-up artist / hair /mirelA eCoBiCi Adi hArleAmirelAeCoBiCi.ro mAnifesT

ˆ

moniCA BirlAdeAnu lefT romAniA BACk

when TABloids feATured PeoPle whom you’d

ACTuAlly heArd of. she moVed To lA, Took uP

ACTing ClAsses, And hAs sinCe sTArred in BoTh

Big ProduCTion moVies And fesTiVAl-worThy

indie films. This june, AT Tiff, she ATTended

The Premiere for Tudor giurgiu’s of snAils

And men, where she PlAys mAnuelA, A single

And Confused 30 yeAr old seCreTAry liVing in

romAniA in 1992. we meT moniCA on A PhoToshooT

for The PosTer of ThAT Very sAme moVie. she

CAme in wiTh A fresh AmeriCAn ViBe – skinny

jeAns, denim shirT, Biker BooTs, messy hAir.

hoT As hell. goT us hooked righT off The

BAT. we sTArTed TAlking ABouT PhoTogrAPhy

(she hAs The mosT AmAzing leiCA CAmerA),

hiPsTAmATiC, her loVe for Books And leonArd

Cohen, her fAsCinATion for sundAnCe And her

TAke on The emerging Chinese film mArkeT.

moniCA dAzed us wiTh her ChArmh And we

insTAnTly knew we wAnTed To shooT her And

show her The wAy we sAw her – lAid BACk,

fresh And ridiCulously BeAuTiful. A week

lATer, she wAs Pledging AllegienCe To The

flAg, we were Pledging AllegienCe To her.

3 8 /

i PledgeAllegiAnCe

To The

photography /

styling /

BArnA nemeThi

oAnA VAsilAChe

BiAnCA nAumoViCi

´

˘ˆ

ou liVe eVerywhere - lA, Bucharest, ny, iasi; you are

a citizen of the world. how do you cope with that? how do you

sleep? how do you eat?

it is true that i get to live everywhere; to such an extent that

i tend to call home any hotel room where i spend more than

3 days, and that worries me a bit. i also tend to have my own

time zone that is never the same with the one of the country

i’m currently in. and i eat room service food. Too much of

it... So it shouldn’t surprise you if i tell you that when i'm in

Bucharest i often wake up at 4 am and want to reach for the

phone to order a chicken avocado sandwich on wheat bread,

no fries and no onions (i have my own perfected recipe).

When i'm on set i crave junk food a lot, especially chocolate,

of any kind, if there’s no red velvet cupcake around (i have a

serious addiction to it). When i’m about to go on long travels

i think i got to the point where i'm able to pack my life in

two pieces of luggage. However, this made me seriously ask

myself lately what home truly is: a locked apartment under

your name somewhere in the world? nameless hotel rooms?

or actually something i have work on, in order to have it?

Are you friends with actors? or do you avoid the breed alto-

gether? how is it in classes, when you have to put your heart

on the table and willingly or not, you become friends?

Yes, of course i’m friends with actors. i guess once you’ve

worked with them, somehow you can’t avoid it. i personally

believe that actors make a special breed of people who walk

around with a FireWire to their souls, and when they work

they just plug into each other's hearts for a deep, direct con-

nection. and they had to develop it only because sometimes

you might get on set and be introduced to a gentleman who’s

going to play your husband starting the next day (and you’ll

have to do a super emotional scene too, by the way). So what

tends to take months, maybe years, for other human beings

to work on (and i’m talking about friendship or intimacy

with another person), sometimes actors have to compen-

sate and find solutions to create it in 24 hours. and when

the connection is created, it feels really good, mostly because

it’s safe - you put your heart on the table in front of some-

one who does the same, and you know he’s not going to take

advantage of that, because it’s all done within the frame of a

professional environment. it feels so good when you want to

hang on to it even after the shooting is finished.

The common ground of pain or problems is the most known

way of bonding between people. i still go to classes every

time i’m in Los angeles and find new generations of actors

every time i go back, only because everybody is pretty much

like me: working all over the world, traveling... after a few

days of watching scenes i feel i might not know the names

of all my classmates, but i certainly know something that’s

essential about them after seeing them perform. and that’s

because it feels as if i’ve seen into their souls when on stage.

ivana chubbuck, the coach, never lets you get away with su-

perficial work on anything. You either give all you've got and

tear your chest open, or she’ll send you back and make you

do it again in a couple of weeks.

at the same time, there are many methods of acting. Some of

them require an individual process, creating an imaginary

world similar to the character’s, in which you live for a while.

That’s why some actors avoid any connection before shoot-

ing. i’m cool with whatever method my partners work with.

i have backup tricks to use in emergency cases anyway.

Tell us an actor you adored when you started acting. feelings

still there, or is he like a high school crush?

i think i missed quite a few classes in high school to go and see

the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair over and over again

because i truly thought pierce Brosnan was pretty much the

most seductive thing i’ve seen on screen up until that time.

i loved his character too - the sleek bored businessman who

offers himself the experience of stealing a piece of art from

the met for his amusement and then falls in love with an ex-

quisite woman who happens to be the detective assigned to

his case. i dreamt for years of being the catherine Banning

to his Thomas crown. Then, about 5 years later, TV mania

magazine featured me on a calendar attached to their christ-

mas issue. i bought it, looked at my picture (my face slashed

by the words may-august, by the way), and when i looked

on the other side, there he was: mr. Brosnan himself sharing

the poster with me. i laughed until it hurt 'cause i guess my

dream had just come true: i was on top of mr. Brosnan or he

was on top of me, depending on which side you’d hang the

calendar. Regardless, i liked this very much and felt this was

the climax to my personal affair with mr. crown. Since then

my cinematic education has improved and my taste in men

evolved in a different direction, far away from the sleek-suit

wearing, perfectly shaven mr. Thomas crown, so he’s now a long

forgotten crush. and i know that because i bumped into mr.

Brosnan while he was waiting for his luggage (like all mortals

do, shocker! [big laugh]) in LaX and watched him for about

5 seconds before looking away and getting on with my life.

y4 2 /

,

Quick. last 3 movies you’ve seen. sell us on one of them.

Beasts of the southern wild, Take shelter, looper. all three

of them are excellent films. neither Beasts of the south-

ern wild (the 2012 Sundance winner and camera d’or/

Un certain regard prize in cannes), nor looper are out yet.

They’ll get released in September, if i’m not mistaken. But

you can definitely look for Take shelter to see it, an amaz-

ing film about mental deterioration that’s borderline pro-

phetic. an excellent performance by michael Shannon that

gives you real shivers of fear in a very Hitchcockian way. it

plays off the fear of losing your mind one day, or just being

taken over by some mental disease. i won’t go any further

so i won’t spoil the film for you, but i highly recommend it.

we know you read your reviews because you posted a few.

how’s that going for you, being exposed like that? how do you

take the hits? how do you take the 6 seconds of glory?

Honestly, i have yet to read a review where i’m personally

slashed by a film critic. They might’ve slashed some of the

movies i was in, but somehow, i got away untouched. The

movies where i was under expectations (do you like my eu-

phemism for bad acting?), or just new to this world and very

inexperienced, were insignificant enough to not be reviewed.

So that’s how i got away.

But i don’t fear a film critic’s sharp tongue as much as i fear

myself when watching a film i was in. if there were a chance

that they would let me get away with doing half-ass things

on screen, i wouldn’t allow it myself. i’m the most fierce

critic i’ll ever have.

and when they shred to pieces a movie or just criticize a

few things, i think i have the necessary discernment to

understand if there’s anything to learn from that. it could

also be that the author of the article was really not in the

mood to see this type of movie and therefore it didn’t land

well with him; or that he makes a good point and i agree

with him, because often i know pretty much most of the

movie’s weaknesses.

But if i learned anything from past experiences is that a

movie will get very different reviews in different countries.

and the very thing you’ll be criticized for in a Sunday’s re-

view in an italian newspaper, might get you awarded in an-

other country.

in the case of francesca where, after the Venice Festival pre-

miere, we were reading quite frequently that people wanted

to see close-ups of my character, see closely how she registers

all the things that happen to her.... and there i was, months

later, getting an award for best actress at Bursa Film Festi-

val in Turkey for transmitting emotions even when my char-

acter had her back to the camera. at least that’s what the

jury said their motivation was.

Truth is, you can’t make movies for reviewers, bloggers or

compulsive Facebook followers. and trying in your movies

to please the crowd who had negative things to say about

your last movie would be a big mistake.

i won’t be a hypocrite and say i only enjoy the process of

filmmaking without the praise that comes with being part

of a good movie. But i have to say there’s a certain type of

praise that makes me purr like a cat: when people come up

to you to share something personal about the film, wheth-

er they’ve been touched by it, or made them think or feel

anything in particular. i enjoyed it so much when a wom-

an approached me at Transylvania Film Festival after the

premiere of snails and men and told me that she felt that

in the movie i was somehow her sister, because she had a

similar job as my character’s and saw in me some of the inse-

curities she had at the time. She said if she hadn’t seen this

film, she would’ve never had the courage to come talk to me.

Because no matter how much you aspire to get the approval

of your peers, it’s the people that pay for the ticket and let

you tell them your story that matter.

Therefore, dear moviegoers out there, we’re no different

than you are: we have bad hair days and tons of insecurities

too. We just put them to work instead of letting them work

against us!

So please come talk to us after seeing a film. We love to hear

your thoughts.

4 8 /

i won'T Be A hyPoCriTe And sAy i only enjoy The ProCess of filmmAking wiThouT The PrAise ThAT Comes wiThBeing PArT of A good moVie.

them who they are in the script.

i think there is an osmosis between my work and my per-

sonal little discoveries about myself. That’s because now i

can’t say if i’ve understood some things about who i am as

a person through some of my characters; or if i understood

some of those characters exactly because i found out some

answers about myself. and this kind of work changes you

in silent ways because you wake up one day having much

more understanding for people’s fears, aggressiveness, in-

securities or simply loving humanity a lot more. i know

for a fact that my transformation is quite palpable: from

being attracted to sleek-perfectly dressed-swiftly moving-

inscrutable-Thomas crowns to rather introspective dam-

aged-self aware-still looking-for-answers-kind of people.

i’m the biggest fan of people: i love watching them think,

laugh or react to things; i love watching discrepancies be-

tween body language and discourse; i love to speculate a

great deal about them and re-construct their biography by

their choice of words, clothes or the way they eat...and i

steal shamelessly from them. i even turn paparazzi on peo-

ple in airports or supermarkets if they happen to wear or

do something that i could use as inspiration for a character

i’m currently working on. i’m a big time thief and when

working on something, i have a blast stealing people’s Face-

book pictures. i download them, file them and use them as

reference when i talk to the director or costume designer

for a specific project. Facebook is an absolutely endless re-

source for documentation.

oh and since we’re on the actor/thief topic, maybe it’s time

to blow up a major cliché that i hear actors and interview-

ers use so often (i myself did it in the past as well). i don’t

believe an actor ever enters the skin of a character and this

phrasing is starting to scratch my ears whenever i hear it.

Because yes, he may train himself to walk differently for

a character, twitch his face in a way he never did before or

practice gestures he stole from an acquaintance, but the

emotions, the drive to act as his character does, are abso-

i’m The greATesT fAn of PeoPle: i loVewATChing Them Think, lAugh or reACTTo Things; i loVe wATChingdisCrePAnCies BeTween BodylAnguAge And disCourse.

would you ever do a remake of a film? Tell us about it.

i won’t jump at the classics if that’s what’s expected, but i

would say that i’d love to be in a remake of murmur of the

heart by Louis malle (i’m a good, solid malle fan) or investi-

gation of a Citizen Above All suspicion by elio petri. i would

be hugely tempted by Bonnie & Clyde, The graduate or fear

eats the soul (the Fassbinder one), but some of them would

lose their juice if transported to present, or would simply

not work at all, or i’m simply not old enough for them (like

mrs. Robinson in The graduate or emmi Kurowski in fear

eats the soul). i think one of the reasons why there aren't

too many remakes of the classics is the technologically ad-

vanced world we live in. a cellphone in the pocket of the main

character can absolutely ruin the plot of the original film.

i’ve never been a fan of re-heated meals, so for the moment

i’ll stick to contemporary material.

Quick. last 3 bands you listened to.

Band of Horses, edward Sharpe and the magnetic Zeroes,

Jack White

They say acting makes you know yourself better. how deep

does that go?

pretty deep i’d say. in acting school, before teaching any

technique, they start training you to be honest about your-

self and admit your own flaws. That’s where it all starts: un-

derstanding and accepting that we are imperfect human

beings and loving ourselves for it. characters are most

likely broken, chipped human beings like ourselves, but in

different ways (‘cause that’s what creates drama, right?).

only by acknowledging that you can approach a character

without judging it.

The moment you judge your character for being a prosti-

tute, a killer, an impostor, you create a rift between you and

the character and great performance can never be achieved;

you have to look at their pains and the damage that made

5 4 /

lutely personal to the actor. Theft can only go so far. He has

to pull all those emotions from inside his own soul: anger,

hate, impulse to kill or lie. How could he borrow those from

anybody?

Therefore i think it’s more appropriate to say that an ac-

tor rather exhibits different parts of himself when play-

ing characters and in no way believes he’s somebody else

(cause that would be borderline schizophrenia, right?). But

of course, this way of presenting things is more comfort-

able; it’s less exposing to the actor who fears he would be

associated with his character’s behavior.

Are you method? what makes you tick?

i’m not method, no. Swimming for months on and off screen

in a fictional reality is absolutely draining to me. i tried it

in the beginning and i ended up exhausted and with my

gun unloaded in front of the camera. it’s certainly a great

way of achieving compelling and authentic human behav-

ior for some actors; it’s just not the thing that works for me.

i know what makes me tick, what makes me scream or cry,

because i’ve watched myself closely over the past years. it’s

enough to think of specific situations that make me feel one

way or another and i can generate perfectly valid visceral

reactions for the scene i’m shooting.

what does a director have to do to make you deliver the best

possible outcome you projected?

Well, first of all he’d have to have immense passion for his

own project. He’d have to love it immensely because that

kind of love is contagious and it spreads beautifully around

the people he works with. and only constant obsession

about a story makes one come up with the best solutions

when necessary. i entrust myself to people like that. and

trusting my director is an absolute must for me in order to

be able to unveil myself and be the best i can be. and i like

my directors to be great manipulators: to understand what

buttons they can push to get a reaction out of you; to un-

derstand how you think and what your own mechanism of

creating the character is, so they’ll know how to guide you

before shooting a scene; or to know where to punch you in

between takes so that you wake up in case you dropped. But

most importantly, a director must watch his actors closely

and never lose sight of what he needs them to do in order to

tell his story. i worked with directors who tend to be very

delicate and subtle, or very caterpillar-like, smashing you

completely so they’ll break your defense mechanisms and

make you become so raw they can shape you in whatever

form they need to. i’m game for whatever their method is

as long as it’s efficient and it’s directed towards the same

goal: telling that story in the most compelling way.

we can’t help but notice that you are a big indie movie ad-

dict. you watch them, act in them, read them, and promote

them. what is it that you like so much about them and hate

about big studio movies?

ah, my love for indie movies was initially a form of snob-

bery i suffered from: i was looking for meanings in my life

and thought that i could find them only in niche form of

art, like auteur cinema or folk/indie/rock music, or photog-

raphy and visual arts. in the beginning, it was just a phase.

But then i found myself there out of pure love. i started to

act in The death of mr. lazarescu and that kind of movie

shaped the opportunities i had for future gigs.

You do one auteur movie after another and you tend to

stay in the festival movie area per forza. i like tremen-

dously a movie that's stimulating or one that requires a lot

of patience, imagination and involvement, however, i also

value greatly the entertainment provided by mainstream

cinema and studio movies. it’s hard to generalize and it

would be plain stupid to do so, but let’s say that i love chal-

lenging projects.

ironically, budgets matter for me: the smaller the budget,

the more comfortable i am. That’s when people don’t have

trailers larger than an apartment in Bucharest and per-

sonal assistants to communicate through and drivers that

5 5 /

i like my direCTors To Be greATmAniPulATors. A direCTor musT wATCh his ACTors Closely And neVer lose sighT of whAT he needs ThemTo do in order To Tell his sTory

about it (especially the inconvenient truths).

Somehow i feel that when a friend or a stranger entrusts me

with a secret that paints them in unflattering colors, it strangely

makes me more comfortable around that person and ignites

in me a huge stream of love and admiration for such courage.

what are you working on right now? Anything juicy?

Yup. Something dry and something juicy, actually. i’m get-

ting ready to shoot a feature film with ioana Uricaru called

After the wedding in September and then in november a film

called Panarea by adam Lough.

i just went through the Director’s lab at Sundance Film in-

stitute in Utah with ioana where we had the chance to be

supported by them financially and logistically to shoot five

of the most challenging scenes for her (and implicitly me),

and then got advised on how to solve various dilemmas we

had about the scenes.

it’s a true blessing to have a chance to experiment on a film

a priori to the actual shooting without having a producer

throwing a tantrum about how you should stick to conven-

tional filmmaking so he can make money off the film, or the

film crew of 50 people checking their watches once you’ve

gone 5 minutes into overtime. We had a really supportive

Sundance crew made out of people who were there out of

passion alone and that’s the essential premise to making

great films.

Quick. something to live for.

art. Love. children.

Quick. something to die for.

children. Love. art.

won’t pick up anybody else except for the king-actor he’s

assigned to. There’s distance between people on projects of

this size and i hate that kind of distance when i work. i also

hate too much comfort and feel much more creative when

i'm in a restrictive environment. and this has nothing to do

with snobbery, but rather with a need of humbleness and a

need to connect with the others. and how can a connec-

tion happen when we have limousines between us? [smiles]

That being said, i have to state that outside my job i like a

comfortable life more than anything else.

you seem quite confident and driven, but you must have

some weak spots. what frightens the shit out of you today?

oh, i think i stated quite a few in the previous answers. But

mostly facing great opportunities and not being ready to

seize them. Fear of disappointing myself. Fear of mediocrity.

i’m sure you’re bored of yourself answering over and over

again the same questions, tell us something you would want

someone close to ask you?

What makes me shut up? [laughs]

what’s your biggest drive?

The need to become a person my children would be in-

spired by... if i’m lucky.

do you like secrets? To hold, to find out about? how does that

affect your research?

i looove secrets, mostly other people’s. i tend to believe

everybody is concealing too much these days, about who

they really are, and their secrets feed my insatiable need for

truth. There’s a need for truth in all of us, we are just scared

to face it because that means we’d have to do something

6 1 /

eVeryBody is ConCeAling Too muCh These dAys, And Their seCreTsfeed my insATiABle need for TruTh. There’s A need for TruTh in All of us, we Are jusT sCAred To fACe iTBeCAuse ThAT meAns we’d hAVeTo do someThing ABouT iT

make-up artist / hair / assistent photographer /doinel ungureAnu Adi hArleA ioAnA enesCuBeAuTy-mAke uP ACAdemy mAnifesT griffon Crew

ˆ

Behind A deeP, wArm And Very serious sound-

ing VoiCe sTAnds A TAll, slender mAn, wiTh

shArP feATures And QuiCk eyes. he sAys

'hello', BuT you QuiCkly reAlize ThAT he's

AlreAdy sCAnning, AnAlyzing And CrAfTing

his nexT moVe. so Before you eVen Think of

whAT To sAy, BogdAn serBAn TAkes leAd wiTh

his firsT QuesTion. usuAlly, Being Around him,

you BeCome A suBjeCT of inTeresT, you will

Be QuesTioned, you will Be Cornered, you will

lAugh And you will neVer wAlk AwAy wiTh-

ouT PAying his TriBuTe: informATion. BeCAuse

BogdAn serBAn is A Curious mAn; he wAs jusT

Born ThAT wAy As he PuTs iT. he will Ask you

AnyThing Any Time; he will dig deePer And

deePer in eVery direCTion Trying To find

someThing To hAng on To, someThing worTh

shAring lATer. seVenTeen yeArs inTo rAdio

BroAdCAsTing, he’s one of The ToP VoiCes of

The indusTry, A fierCe endorser And PromoT-

er of loCAl CulTure And A Very imPorTAnT

figure in The uPrising of The romAniAn indie

musiC sCene. A sTrong BelieVer in The Power

And PersisTenCe of his medium, we found

him on The fronT lines, fighTing The sysTem,

ProVing ThAT QuAliTy rAdio CAn sTill sell.

6 8 /

rAdioliVe

TrAnsmission

,

,

ogdAn serBAn is A True rAdiomAn; he has flow. We

just had to unleash him in a discussion about music and step

aside. We talked with him in two very nice and special ven-

ues to us —energia & papiota— over a couple of beers. First

round was on us, he took the second one. The text below is a

rendering without cuts of all the topics we went through. We

had a fun time living in the night.

[Talking about getting people interviewed and such] For ex-

ample last year, when ian Brown was here i asked the organ-

izers to do an interview. Since we were partners at the event,

i told him: 'hey, come on, let’s take him to the studio', and you

know what he said? He said 'dude, i'm an old dog, it's been

done man, you know'. 'come to the radio, give us an interview!'

'Let's just drop it... i'd rather get drunk with you'. and i got

that. This year, he’s coming back and i’m kinda curious if he'll

give any interviews, since he's coming with The Stone Roses.

Well, probably the rest of the band's gonna give them, not

him. compared to him, those guys haven't been interviewed

as much.

////

[moving on, talking trivia about the local bands] When they

[The moooD] came to GuerriLive, i asked [the lead singer] to

sing normally. He’s got such a head voice, and i was on to him.

He just can’t do it. He played along, he wanted to and i told

him 'listen, it’s oK, just choose any track you want, and then

sing it in a normal voice'. and he kept trying… i was playing

him song after song, but he kept going for the pitch. He can’t,

he just can’t do it any other way now. i was like: Look, don’t

go up theeeeerreee [imitates the pitch, everyone laughs] never

the less, the pitch part, he fucking masters it. He masters the

technique very well. [we all agreed]

Romanian bands? They’re all in one big pile. couldn't tell you

a favorite. i have periods, i have phases. i can’t allow myself

to stay with one single band. i cannot afford to be a one band

fan. [The music zone he's in right now] There’s a very good

vibe now, the electro zone moves incredibly well. The guys

from Yoon. Last week we had Yellow, and now we have Yoon

coming. This is an electronic duo with seven people in the live

version. i really wanted to show them to my musical director,

but there's a tension now, because we support a lot of Roma-

nian music and people have started whining: 'Whoa! come on,

too much Romanian music'. So what i did was stop telling

people where the bands are from and just play the tracks, and

of course everybody liked it, yeah! [laughs]

everybody went 'wow! yeah, it really sounds good'. not

many bands can pull that off, but mostly in the electro area,

a lot of them sound like any other foreign band. You can’t

tell a difference, they have very good production value. But i

found out one of their secrets: they are mostly family bands,

so they stay together; they’ve got time. There’s no pressure

between them like 'dude, can’t rehearse now, i’ve got another

gig'. They don’t drag mercenaries, i mean players, after them.

no, they take their time. They afford to take as many weeks,

even years as they feel they need to come up with something.

See, that was obvious with Robin and the Backstabbers.

The drummer… Robin's brother… the hardest to replace in

their case.

[Tell us how you started working for the radio] Wow! [you're

still doing it after so many years] it’s been seventeen years.

[how come you didn't get tired, bored, fed up?] Hold on, hold

on, there’re too many questions now. [They’re supposed to be,

haha] So, i’ve been doing this for seventeen years. i was at the

age when everyone tries everything; basically everyone was

trying, period. i knew what i wanted, i had a plan, like any

other teenager, and it was acting, i wanted to do theatre. But,

you see, at the same time, the rumour spread around in my

native town, Targoviste, that the first private-owned radio

station was going to pop up after the Revolution. it was 1995

and i gave an audition and that was it. although i didn’t get

a chance to talk to my old mates, i think that everyone in

my generation did the same thing. We all auditioned, we were

all trying to mimic the way they speak on the radio, we were

all doing it at home and then we realized we would actually

like to do this. i really started to want to do radio. The great

advantage was that the guy who founded the radio station

was a true visionary, and also very well advised, so he took

people from Radio Romania actualitati, which was the best

state radio station before 1989. These guys were the only pros,

you know, even if they were old school, they were the only real

radio pros. They knew what they were doing. So we set up, we

went to Bucharest to see a couple of shows, to see how they

did Romania actualitati, the shows with megan, Ghitulescu

and paul Grigoriu. Those were the guys that did the morn-

ing show, and we saw what it meant to get a show ready all

night long. They came in at ten in the evening, that’s when

the job started, had their own offices, bed included, and on

top of that, the most notable detail, [leans right into the re-

corder and whispers] a case of vodka. They started working

and spent two or three hours doing it. a huge team worked for

B7 0 /

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shirt / dior

shirt / BogdAn’s own

that morning show. it was extremly elaborate, or so it seemed

to all of us then, but the truth is, it seems even more so today.

it somehow resembled a bureaucratic entanglement, the way

they did things, because the editing was done on an assembly

line. There were people who worked in shifts all night long. in

different offices, on desks, material was collected from all over

the country, from correspondents everywhere, and they were

editing piece by piece, even word for word, from magnetic

tapes. Then they called the guy who was running the show

in that particular morning, who could have been any of the

three, and they told him 'This is it', while other editors pre-

pared the headlines and made up the text that either Grigo-

riu, or megan, or Ghitulescu would read in that morning. Fi-

nally, they got some sleep and woke up at four in the morning,

so they could start the morning show at five.

They had this cool thing too, i don’t know whether they still

have it at Romania actualitati now, but the studios were

equipped with pipes and tubes to ventilate the air within,

because studios usually have no windows. So they had these

venting pipes installed, and they could smoke inside the stu-

dios. people smoked inside a radio station, and that was truly

something. When they did the first private radios, in my time,

smoking was not allowed, we didn’t have the venting installa-

tion. But those guys smoked.

[About not leaving radio, and radio today] Well, not yet. i still

see it as the only area left, i mean the only one that offers

me real freedom, not just a feeling of it. it’s the only medium,

except maybe writing online that gives you this kind of free-

dom. But the thing is that everyone else working in radio

here has unfortunately ruined it. They no longer know how to

value that freedom. [radios in general or do you have certain

stations in mind?] Both. You asked me why i’m still doing ra-

dio today. This is why, because there’s still a place for guerrilla

on the market. Worldwide too. Look at the States, where you

have satellite radios in your car, already a standard feature in

the american car-building industry. cars come out of the as-

sembly line with satellite radio; you have 5,000 radio stations

already set up. You couldn’t listen to all of them until you’re

done with the car, [laughs] you couldn't listen to all of them

until you died. and the way i see it, even though people have

been sobbing for the inevitable demise of radio for years now,

it will outlive television.

it is an evolution no one anticipated, but it turns out replac-

ing that voice in your car has proven to be a quite a chal-

lenging task. also, it’s extremely hard to replace its ability

to surprise you. This is what radio does best. no matter how

many cDs you have, how many megabytes in mp3 is, there’s

no way it can still surprise you, because in the end, you al-

ready know what’s in there and radio will always find a way

to surprise you.

[we argue that it also brings an opinion to the table. most of

the times, the voice gets to share opinions, thoughts, feelings,

and people listen to it because they want to relate] i’m sure

you’re only referring to us [Radio Guerrilla], because other-

wise, it's not the case. in these times, you are what you speak.

if we would follow this line of thought, all radio stations in

Romania have come to provide something that has helped

in alienating this whole nation. They feed their audience

through a funnel, underestimating them, ignoring them.

and they do this every day over and over again.

[so you manage to listen to other radios as well] Well, yes, i’m

also being exposed to them in taxis, in shops, and i realize

nothing has changed. everything is frozen. not only that, i

mean not only the language they use, but the music as well.

Discourse and music are one and the same. it’s the same

bitrate with the same scarce words. a fast bitrate with few

words, that’s the way it is. That’s the recipe.

[About whether he agrees with us that Bucharest could even-

tually become the cultural and artistic hotspot of eastern

europe] That's a high goal, you're brave. Yes, why not? Bu-

charest seems to be culturally active, but i can't possible

follow in this idea empty handed. i will have to wait. it’s

obvious that things start happening. i got an email these

days from andrei Jecza, the one who has the Jecza Gallery

in Timisoara. His father was an outstanding sculptor, and

he keeps suggesting to me, for quite some time now, that we

do a mix between Romanian music and contemporary art.

He has managed to put his thoughts on paper and he found

some mone. He’s going to do something like affordable art.

in romAniA, in These Times, you Are whAT you sPeAk. And if we would follow in This line of ThoughT, All rAdio sTATions in romAniA hAVe Come To ProVide some-Thing ThAT hAs AlienATed This whole nATion.

7 4 /

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shirt / BogdAn’s own jacket / d&g

Limited, numbered series of contemporary art, joined with

music from bands, sold at affordable prices and expected to

increase their value in time. The idea is to attract the music

consumer and encourage him to look at art, as well.

////

[About the new producer of the show] Let me tell you another

story. Listen to this, our current producer irina petrovici

was a huge fan of the show. She's the one that created and

managed the Facebook page 'imi place sa logout' ('i like to

logout'), which soon became the show’s official fan page. We

had a producer at the show for five years and when he left, i

really didn’t know who to turn to, and Guerrilla Logout is a

show that really needs a producer. Delia, my girlfriend, rec-

ommended her, she said 'take irina!', and all i had to do was

call her up. Think about it, she didn't do any radio before, no

radio production, but she came in, learned everything really

fast and was right on track in no time. She came up with a

bunch of stuff, things that the show needed and were pretty

obvious to an outsider, who had nothing to do with the in-

dustry.

[what did irina do before?] She worked in an advertising

agency, in more than one, actually. She managed several

bands, including the The mono Jacks, i think one of her

last jobs was with the The Romanian cultural institute.

She came in with a great deal of ideas i would have never

thought of. This also boosted the online version of the show.

There’s no way this kind of radio show can work out with

only one brain, there are a few brains working with all that’s

going on there: the producer; the lead-editor, who comes up

with the special segment called 'The Daily Synthesis' on pol-

itics and stuff like that; now, this last half-year, we’ve also had

a project manager, who’s very much connected to music, and

has his own band. actually he rolls with something like four

different bands. i hadn’t thought about that either- to have

someone from the other side [a musician] working for the

show. each one of us radio people look at [bands] like they

were some kind of product, and when you bring them in,

look, here’s the product himself telling us where things stand.

[speaking of bands and guerrilive, how did the whole guer-

rilive business start] There was this mono Jacks concert

in Underworld, in September, almost two years ago. i went

there with one of my colleagues from the news, George mi-

halcea. our current producer, irina petrovici was managing

the band and she called me up: 'come see them live!'. So i

went. When i realized we were fifteen, maybe sixteen people

in that small club room, i told her 'hey, wait a minute, we can

do this in our studio. Same thing. Why shouldn’t this band

play in our studio?!' The following day i came up with the

concept and wrote it down. mihai Dinu, the musical direc-

tor of Radio Guerrilla got hooked right away. He had done it

before at RFi. So he backed up the idea. everything moved

very fast. We did a demo with Les elephants Bizzares. peo-

ple immediately went 'wow!'. But now, after two years, if you

make me listen to the demo, well, we might as well just shoot

ourselves, the quality was…

[we gave radio guerrilla credit; we said people do go out

more now, people want to hear the live bands promoted by

guerrilla] We have indeed become a benchmark now. if any-

one is looking for new bands they come to us. Well, this is

what i tried to do from the very beginning, but i didn’t wrap

it like that. i said 'let’s experiment, let's ask every band to

play something else other than their own stuff'. They all do

covers anyway. But there’s so much pride in this area and no

one does covers of another Romanian bands. Lucia came up

with a cover on The moooD. an incredible one, better than

the original. She’ll be big, but maybe for the outside market,

not here, in Romania. Here she will be assimilated with the

author of the song. Let the God of Good music help her not

stray towards inna and such, musically speaking; otherwise

i wish her all the notoriety in the world.

[speaking of inna and her notoriety, tell us about this import-

export music] There was a reporter who asked my opinion on

this for a UK magazine. She was doing an article on our mu-

sical exports and after she interviewed a lot of people from

the industry, people from well-known music labels who were

interested in selling this kind of euro-trash, euro-dance, she

came to me for a different opinion. i told her the same thing

i’m telling you. my opinion hasn’t changed, even though

this was about a year ago. as long as you meet your audience

with the same kind of music, filtered through the funnel i

was talking about earlier, this is the kind of music you get.

if you’d use a sieve, you’d have several genres pass through

it; but with a funnel, only one genre will be allowed to pass

- it quickly becomes the only available genre and everyone

thinks it’s the standard and the only one that is of value. This

7 6 /

There’sso muCh Pride in This AreA ThAT no one does CoVersof AnoTherromAniAn BAnd˘ˆ

is what we’ve exported until now. That's why this country be-

came a landmark on the musical map as the best producer of

this kind of music: euro-dance, euro-beats, euro-trash.

[luckily, other genres have started to scratch the surface, like

electro] Yes, electro.[pauses] i think there are several levels

to this discussion. inna is one level. other Romanian artists

that proved successful on the underground european al-

ternative scene like The amsterdams are at a very different

level. They had several european tours and that, in my book,

is also a success. Unfortunately in the underground, we

can’t talk about sales. alternative bands will never keep up

with inna when it comes to international sales, but they are

slowly trying to catch up. For example, emagic has created

two event companies with a well defined intention in this

sense: they realized that most festivals impose their lineups.

That's why we go to B’estfest and listen to some Yugoslavian

bands, or Bulgarians that not a living soul has ever heard

of. They came with the idea of making exchanges between

festival lineups. They want to sell bands like Robin and the

Backstabbers, like Grimus to other major festivals, to help

increase their notoriety.

[maybe the public will force the industry to change] i met this

kid and she showed me the music on her phone. She had Flor-

ence and the machine and Foster the people in there and i

asked her where she got her music from. instead of answering

me straight away, she paused for a second, because she didn’t

remember. She wasn’t listening to radio, she wasn’t watch-

ing TV, she was a very atypic teenager. Then she remembered

that her friends gave her the music. Their parents heard it on

the radio, looked it up and shared it with their children and

their children share it among themselves. These kids’ parents

listen to Guerrilla and they are directly exposed to other

kinds of music. This may very well mean that our salvation

might come from their kids. it’s the generation that will put

pressure and will eventually change the standards of what

something becomes mainstream. [we all agree, but believe it’s

a matter of time] it will also be a matter of money. i think

that with all the piracy that’s going on now, it will eventually

bring some change in how the money is made. When it comes

down to buying a ticket for a concert you won’t pay for any

kind of show any more. They will have to deliver more then

just show up and sing.

////

[we have plenty of concerts, but not enough shows] You should

make the necessary distinctions between them. When you

say concert, you mean club concerts, you cannot deliver any-

thing else there, there’s no way, no room, you just can’t. all

you can do there is play your music. This is the way things

happen abroad, too. Bands are being chosen from the clubs,

and then the production companies come in and make them

big. Wether you have a show or a concert, i guess it’s about

the number of people who can attend, about the club’s capac-

ity, i think that’s the way things go. i know that on Broad-

way, where theaters are concerned, it’s about the number of

seats. Budgets depend on the number of people that attend.

clubs, i'm sure, are also divided according to their capacity.

and before you flood the market with a lot of small concerts,

full of visuals and stuff, before you saturate, before you in-

vade all these small places, you cannot go to the next level,

to ask for a bigger space, to ask for a show. clubs will auto-

matically have to make sure they fulfill this demand; they

will supply screens, lights, the whole setup. They will have to

meet the demand. Don't forget that in this trophic chain the

only thing that matters is the guy paying for the ticket. and

he measures his 'ticket' in the number of beers they cost —

i’ve seen this. in Romania, concerts are being measured by

the number of beers. We should establish a top of how many

hectoliters of beer are being sold at concerts.

[About film scores and end credits soundtracks] The film in-

dustry in this country, for instance, although it’s very hot, it

fails to come meet and collaborate with the music industry.

i haven’t heard about any filmmaker approaching a band to

ask for the rights for using their music on a film soundtrack.

and i don’t think the bands are the problem here. i think

that directors don’t even consider the possibility. it may

seem funny to you, but in mungiu’s latest one he could have

easily done it... Let me think, it should be something disso-

nant, there are absolutely bucolic images in the film. maybe

niste baieti, e.m.i.L.? no, no… Luna amara, there you go.

That’s it. That's right. i’ll ask him at the premiere, i’ll call

mungiu and ask him: What do you think of Luna amara?

could you have used them in the film? For the end credits

at least.

[About being a good listener] i’m not just listening to music,

i listen to everything that’s going on around me. There are

some rules i instinctively follow. They taught me in college

that to be a good actor you have to be a constant consumer

of theatre, to go to as many performances as you can. To be

a good radio person, you have to be a very good listener. So

i listen to radios abroad, as many as i can, and i listen to

what's going on around me. maybe you haven’t noticed but i

have been asking you a lot of questions too. There were a lot

of times when you were answering to me. [yes, we’ve noticed]

[About piracy] as far as music is concerned, i think this is the

only possibility for Romanian music to become attractive:

to be bought. Because at this time, we are swimming in fake

top charts. even our top, the one we [Radio Guerrilla] do, is

a top of preferences. The best top, the relevant one for any

future industry, the one we don’t have now, is the sales top. if

someone doesn’t come up with a psychological price for the

Romanian track, downloaded from the internet, for instance

1 Ron per track, we won’t have anything close to this. The

7 7 /

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shirt / diorjacket / d&g

shirt / diorpants / BogdAn’s own

way iTunes met the industry, when Steve Jobs came and said

99 cents is what you should pay for a track. it all turned into

a phenomenon. Romania has the premise for something like

that and it can be the next major thing in music. But, again,

there should be a psychological price. Bands should be the

first to say 'yes, we agree', then the other companies that col-

lectively manage the copyrights, and so on. everybody un-

der the same law.

That's for music. When it comes to film, i'm all for going

to the cinema, it’s another thing altogether. it’s a shame to

pirate it, you're missing out actually. We even have niche

cinemas, like europa on calea mosilor, where all you get is

european cinema. it’s a shame, really, not to pay that shitty

price for a ticket.

[And finally about the young generation and his childhood] i

think it’s a generation that has grown old prematurely. They

live in a made up reality. They no longer enjoy the pleasure

of touching something, of feeling with their own hands, 'here,

touch it, that’s how it feels'. i think that’s harmful. i was look-

ing at young kids, i’ve got a lot of friends, of colleagues, who

have kids, even grown-up kids, and i was looking at them: the

pleasure of playing or messing around in the streets is gone.

Those kids don’t even have a clue what it means. it’s a little

bit sad. i know the mobile phone was a great achievement

after all, a great technological discovery, and a very useful

one, but on the other hand, it has shaven quite a few years off

the kids’ lives. When i was a kid, during the summer breaks,

i was leaving the house at 10 o’clock, and coming back late

in the evening. nobody knew where i was, they could only

guess where to find me and if anyone needed me, they went

and searched in the neighborhood, near the lake, in the park.

my acting up reached its highest quota when i was a teen-

ager. That was immediately after the Revolution, we were the

generation that had its first two years of high school before

the fall of the regime and the last two years after it. one

thing i remember about the early 90’s is something that i'm

sure had never occurred anywhere else, and that we were the

only ones who experienced it: we smoked right in front of

the classroom. When we saw the teacher come along the cor-

ridor, we put out our cigarettes right in front of him, while

looking him in the eye. That was during the first term, in the

first days after the Revolution. if we didn’t like a teacher, we

went out into the schoolyard, put up a strike and had him

changed. We were in the tenth grade and we knew that in the

twelfth grade the main way of rebelling and of marking one’s

passage from school to adulthood was to tear one’s uniform.

We realized we wouldn’t have any uniforms to tear by the

end of high school, they weren't mandatory anymore, so in

the eleventh grade i suggested we pick up a day in which we

would all come wearing the uniforms we still had from the

previous years, even if they were a little small and all. it was

February and we covered the trees in those torn uniforms.

it was my period of discoveries, and a lethal combination

of rock music and a lot of philosophy i obviously didn’t un-

derstand. i started with cioran and, yes, with vodka, a lot

of vodka. i was getting home in the mornings and my par-

ents kept trying to understand: 'We are not giving you any

money, how can you come home every morning shit drunk?!'.

it was fine, because i didn’t ask them for anything, and that

in itself was quite something: i returned home every morn-

ing absolutely sizzled. i had no dime in my pocket and still

came back drunk. my mom took my key away, so she could at

least know when and in what state i was arriving home. Then

we would spend another hour or two talking in the kitchen.

That’s roughly said, because in fact i was the only one talk-

ing. and my mother kept telling me: 'You know, if i'd write

down everything you say, i might just get it published and

it would be spectacular'. i can’t remember what i told her,

it was probably delirious stuff about what i had been read-

ing during the day, before drinking, and from the conversa-

tions i was having at night, while drinking. What i mean to

say is that my parents always let me do things my way. my

folks would call the police only if i didn’t come home for

three whole days. That was our agreement: three days. after

that they could call the police and, implicitly, the morgue.

i knew this and always called them, no matter what, after

three days, from wherever i might have been. [like from the

morgue] mom, i’m in the morgue, don’t worry, it's all good.

[laughs.]

my PArenTsAlwAys leT me do Things my wAy. They'd CAll The PoliCe only if i didn’T Come home for Three whole dAys

8 1 /

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