On Wednesday, May 2nd, I visited the Old West, medieval Europe, and American suburbia — and I never left Romania. I was touring Castel Film Studios, the largest, and as of a few weeks ago, the only film studio in the country (the other one, Bucharest Film Studios, recently went bankrupt). Not only did I get to see some sets and sound stages, but I also got to interview Vlad Paunescu, the founder of Castel and Romania’s most prolific film producer.
So how did this all happen? When I began researching Romania’s film industry, I was focusing mostly on the Romanian New Wave — the “national” cinema of this country, which has become so popular in recent years. But after digging around on the Internet for a couple hours, I was struck by something else: there are a lot of English-language movies made in Romania and other countries in Eastern Europe. Romania did not look familiar to me when I arrived a month and a half ago, but had I actually seen it before? Was Romania right in front of my eyes this whole time, on the screens I have been watching my whole life? I had to investigate this, and I knew Castel was the place to begin.
Vlad Paunescu began constructing Castel Film Studios in 1990 on an empty plot of land in Izvorani, a village 40 minutes outside of Bucharest. During the Revolution a year earlier, Paunescu was in the streets filming the unrest on his 35mm camera. He was even briefly named Minister of Culture by a temporary revolutionary government. But after Ceausescu fell, Paunescu turned his attention abroad. As Castel’s website states, “Romania found itself to be a virgin land for the global film industry.” Mountains, rivers, castles, and so much more were suddenly within Hollywood’s reach at a very cheap price, and Paunescu knew how to take advantage of this. Today, Castel is a state-of-the-art studio, encompassing 35 acres and 11 sound stages, including the second largest in all of Europe. Castel has been a production partner on over 250 movies and television shows, nearly all of which were shot in English.
Castel has transformed Romania into everything from present day Ireland (Leapin’ Leprechauns) and New York (A Christmas Prince) to early 20th century Milwaukee (Harley and the Davidsons). The biggest project (the first “super-production”) to shoot at Castel was Cold Mountain (2003), the civil war epic starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. It’s fascinating to me that Romania is so often used as a cheap stand-in for other places, but is so rarely used to represent Romania. The Romanian language, people, and history have all been scrubbed from this landscape because Hollywood doesn’t care about this context and international audiences are unaware of it.
In Inventing Eastern Europe, Larry Wolff describes the ways in which Romania and other nations in the region have been perceived by the West for centuries. He examines accounts of mythical beasts and filthy savages. He analyzes fantasies of imperialist (and often sexual) conquests. He argues that Eastern Europe has been configured as an ambiguous, mysterious middle ground between the civilized West and the exotic East. The films produced by Castel, I believe, are a continuation of this narrative, steeped in traditions of dehumanization and exploitation.
During my visit to Castel, the studio was in pre-production on A Christmas Prince 2, a sequel to the hit Neflix original film released last December. A Christmas Prince (2017) tells the story of Amber Moore (Rose McIver), a journalist assigned to cover the coronation of Prince Richard (Ben Lamb), heir to the throne of “Aldovia,” a made-up country located somewhere in Eastern Europe. Aldovia may feature some of Romania’s landscapes, along with exteriors of Peleş Castle, but its connections to Romania end there. In Aldovia, everyone speaks English with a charming British accent, and Prince Richard bears a striking resemblance to Prince Harry. Aldovia is essentially a United Kingdom-knockoff with a bit of exoticism. This is the romantic fantasy, many degrees removed from Romania, that Amber gets to experience.
If Aldovia sounds like something specific to A Christmas Prince, it’s not. In fact, while doing research for this project, I was surprised to learn that three other films with very similar titles (A Princess for Christmas, A Royal Christmas, and Crown for Christmas) were all filmed at various castles in Romania. In each of these films, an American woman falls in love with a prince during Christmastime in a made-up Eastern European kingdom where everybody speaks with a British accent. Romania has become the home to this oddly specific sub-genre of bad, straight-to-TV romantic comedies that have little to nothing to do with actual Romania.
There is another very specific sub-genre that Castel is known for: the vampire film. Castel has produced everything from Vampire Journals (1996) to Teenage Space Vampires (1998) to Vampire Academy (2014). These trashy horror films are set in Romania, and more specifically Transylvania, in a nod to the original Dracula story, which, of course, took place in this region and is loosely inspired by stories of the 15th century Wallachian ruler Vlad the Impaler. But, like Dracula, written by Irish author Bram Stoker, the vampire films produced at Castel are made by Westerners for Western audiences. In these films, Romania is Romania, but it is also not Romania because it is portrayed as a land of mythical monsters and demons. If A Christmas Prince turns Romania into a romantic dream, then Vampire Academy transforms it into a living nightmare.
But what do these seemingly unrelated sub-genres have in common? And what do they say about Western perspectives of Romania? In both cases, a Western woman finds herself in an exotic land, living out a taboo sexual fantasy with an exotic man. The climax of each film — the moment we have all been waiting for — is a sexual interaction between these two characters: lovers sharing a kiss in one genre, a monster sucking the blood of his victim in the other. Both genres involve the Westerner invading the land of the other, and then submitting to the other in an act of intense pleasure.
This is different from how I usually think of colonial conquest — as an act of “rape” committed by the male invader against the vulnerable, female other. For an example of that storyline, look no further than my blog post on Madame Butterfly. I suspect the difference here is that Eastern Europe is portrayed as a land of savagery, and therefore masculinity, versus the Far East, which has a feminine tameability. To navigate Eastern Europe, the Westerner must be willing to follow the savage and lose control. The Westerner must penetrate the land, and then be penetrated by the people.
I wonder whether this reflects my experience in Romania as well. I came for an exciting study abroad experience and I certainly found one. I have immersed myself in Romanian food, history, and culture. I have talked to Romanians in taxis and danced with them at clubs. There is a part of me that wishes I could stay here forever, but there is a larger part of me that knows this could never be. I will always be an American here, and at the end of the day, I will be happy to go home. I have been bred to see the world through a Western perspective, in which Romania, in all its beauty and “danger,” is the other. I have tried and will continue to try to empathize with the people here, but I fear there is a certain part of me that will always look down upon them. This study abroad experience has exposed me to far more of Romania than any Hollywood movie would, but I also know it will never be enough. Walking through the sets at Castel has made me aware that even in Romania, I cannot escape the shadow of the West.
Nice and thoughtful piece, Adam…Of course, Romania will continue to be ‘the other’…The question is what kind?