I grew up watching movies, fascinated by this universe where everything seemed possible. Movies made me discover the world with a lot of empathy, sometimes with fascination or revolt. When I saw Fitzcarraldo, by Werner Herzog, which tells the story of an eccentric and dreamy businessman who sets out to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, something about the determination of the character marked me so deeply that it haunted me for a long time. Then I understood why.
The desire to have a film magazine began to grow in me, a desire I didn’t even realize until after this magazine appeared. Growing up with a mother who also had a culture magazine, I used to glue sheets, make a table of contents, and sell my magazine at school.
Films in Frame exists because I believed in the necessity of a cinema publication in Romania. However, putting the idea into practice seemed as impossible as Hertzog’s character’s dream. Like Fitzcarraldo, I knew that the impossible could become possible. With a little determination, madness, and sustained financial effort independently — to which various trusted partners were added along the way — and together with a team of remarkable film critics and journalists passionate about cinema, who believe in the potential of independent film to understand the world we live in more deeply and consciously, we launched Films in Frame: a bilingual magazine solely about cinema through which we aimed to bring the audience closer to Romanian film and the magical world behind the camera.
I felt the need to share the power of stories told through cinema. To discuss them with you and write about them. In the 5 years since the magazine exists, we have built a platform dedicated to independent cinema, where each of you can discover new and old films and form your own opinion about the filmmakers of the local film industry based on FIF articles. We supported young film critics, a category of increasingly passionate people, for whom editorial opportunities are extremely limited. When we had resources, we sent correspondents to the most important film festivals, both here and abroad, and published exclusive texts about the films and filmmakers who inspired us. And, contrary to the well-known trend in publishing, we paid very little attention to the numbers behind and more to the quality of the published texts.
We know how hard independent films are made — it’s one of the great lessons we’ve learned over the years. It is just as difficult to write about them. Or, more precisely, to support an editorial team, in the conditions of financial (and cultural) instability that affect all publications in Romania and abroad. It can be even more complicated when you insist on writing only about film, without deviating from your dream. Fitzcarraldo is not a film about a crazy dream and a dangerous journey, but about the desire to surpass limits and explore new horizons, and these years built with the team, with a community and a loyal audience, have shown me that a magazine can mean more than I thought.
We want to continue writing about the cinema we love, but these very complicated times make us think more about survival than about the new printed issue. So we need your help. If you like what we do and want to help our collaborators and the Films in Frame team, you can find on the Support Us page a few ways in which you can stand by us.
Thank you for reading us!
Laura Mușat, Editor-in-Chief Films in Frame