Liviu Ciulei

Liviu Ciulei was one of the most important directors in Romanian cinema. Born on July 7th 1923 in Bucharest, he was raised in a family of intellectuals. His father was a renowned architect. Ciulei studied architecture himself, and then he attended 'The Royal College of Theater and Music of Bucharest'. His debut as an actor came with the 1946 stage version of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Odeon Theater in Bucharest. In 1954, Ciulei made his directorial debut with N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker" at Bulandra Theater (then called The Municipal Theater). He also started a prodigious career as a stage designer, mainly for his own theatrical productions. In 1964, Ciulei became the first Romanian filmmaker to win the 'Best Director' award at the Cannes Film Festival for his acclaimed epic Forest of the Hanged (1965). This was his 7th picture as a film actor and the 3rd and last as a film director. He continued to work hard as a director, actor and stage designer for the theater in Romania, but also abroad, in Canada, Australia and the US. He became the director of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1980. After the Romanian Revolution (1989), Ciulei returned to Romania for several new plays, as the Honorary Manager of the Bulandra Theater. In his last decades, Liviu Ciulei's interactions with the film world were limited to filmed plays (O scrisoare pierduta - 1977, Hamlet - 2000) and a documentary about his greatest stage designs. Ciulei died on the 24th October 2011 shortly before the first US retrospective of his complete films in New York City.