Nonfiction Writing Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

After the fall of communism, Romanian literature, theatre and film seem to have grown an appetite for reality. Journals and autobiographies, nonfictional confessions and novels, plays and performances bearing socio-political weight, feature films and documentaries and, in the last decade, the growth of the New Romanian Cinema try to encompass and give meanings to local historical events, contemporary dilemmas or social malaise. Even if, at first, the focus seemed to be on the sins of the late communist regime and on the difficulty of adapting to the new economic and political rules, these past years have shown that the artist can catch any spark from real life and reshape it for domestic and
international audiences. Books, plays and films were based on TV or printed news, political and economic controversies, personal or collective tragedies,social phenomena and so on. Romanian artists started to get increasingly involved in the public life, claiming more and more the functions of activists,vigilantes or prosecutors. After dealing with the crimes of dictatorial regimes, they approached themes related to urgent matters from contemporary Romania: migration, the shift from state-held economic destinies to private initiative, health and education systems, ethnic minorities, European integration, mining environmental controversies or the new bourgeois life.
Nevertheless, one of the themes that raised much attention was the special relation that the Church (most frequently the Orthodox Church) had with its followers and the State. Secular voices tried to launch debates about various privileges the State offered to the Church, the large number of churches that were being built, teaching religion and creationism in public schools, controversial practices of some members of the clergy, or, more recently, building the monumental Romanian People’s Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest. And these are just some rough cut-outs of what preceded the death of a 23-year-old orphan girl in June 2005, in a small monastery in Eastern Romania, after being chained to a wooden board and forced to fast while the priest prayed so the Devil would leave her tormented body and mind. News of the event travelled the world, and
polarized the public opinion in Romania, both between secular and religious communities, and inside the Orthodox Church. A few days later, everyone seemed to be a part of this stormy public play.
In the years that followed, this complex incident became one of the most interesting approaches to transforming real-life events to literature, theatre or film, as between 2006 and 2012 journalist and writer Tatiana Niculescu Bran, and the directors Andrei Şerban and Cristian Mungiu addressed the death of Irina Cornici at the Tanacu monastery. Each of them initiated ambitious projects, largely discussed in Romania and abroad (Şerban’s play premiered in New York, Mungiu’s movie was acclaimed at Cannes in 2012).
It is the aim of this paper to try to reveal some of the transforming processes involved in the adaptation of this traumatic incident to these various mediums (literature, theatre and film), and also the inherent tensions contained in these very particular adaptations, especially those that address the relation between the adapted works and the real events.