Bucharest – the low budget Hollywood

Date: 04/05/05

Legend has it that Romania owes the existence of its vast film studios in Buftea, on the outskirts of Bucharest, to the cinema ambitions of the daughter of the country's first post-war communist leader.

Despite her obvious lack of talent, Lica Gheorghiu Dej was insistently promoted as an actress and played in several movies shot by the biggest directors of the day. Her father, Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, the secretary-general of the Communist party in 1945-65, oversaw the construction of the Buftea studios, which opened in 1951.

It produced more than 600 movies in 50 years. The stages created to produce movies praising communism are now being advertised by their owner as a new 'Hollywood East'.

The new owners, Media Pro, one of the largest media and entertainment groups in Eastern Europe, market a combination of low production costs, qualified multilingual crews and good locations to attract large productions.

The competition is fierce between Czech, Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian studios to catch big movie productions.

At stake is a hugely profitable business, with industry insiders estimating that Hollywood spends some $13 billion (c10.1bn) per year on movies shot abroad.

While most of this money has traditionally been spent in Canada and the UK, Eastern Europe has been attracting Hollywood since the early 1990s. Its main selling points are low production costs and an unspoiled landscape. So the battle began between Central and Eastern Europe's studios to net large production or co-production deals.

The Czech Republic became the preferred location for filmmakers because of well-equipped studios and the beautiful architecture of Prague. But since production costs in Romania are some 40% lower than in the Czech Republic, Romania is beginning to be seen as a good alternative. The varied landscape and the fact that the country's two largest private studios, Media Pro Pictures and Castel Film, have invested heavily to upgrade infrastructure have improved its pulling power.

The biggest catch for Romania was the $95 million (c73.8m) budget Cold Mountain, produced in 2003 for Miramax. Despite criticism back home that a movie about the American civil war was shot in Eastern Europe, it is estimated that shooting in Romania saved around $30m (c23.3m) on production costs, or around 30% of the film's budget.

Since they were bought from the Romanian state in 1998, 37 international co-production movies have been shot in the Media Pro Pictures studios. The odd roaming dog that one spots on the site of the studio is a reminder of the state of abandon the studios were in before they were bought and completely renovated by Media Pro.

"They were a ruin, there were no doors, the stages were taken over by weeds, and stray dogs and cats were inhabiting the property," says Media Pro's Anca Romanescu. But now the studios are attracting large productions, such as Cave (Bruce Hunt, 2004), Franco Zeffirelli's Callas Forever (2001, starring Fanny Ardant and Jeremy Irons) and Costa Gavras's Amen, with Mathieu Kassovitz and Ulrich Tukur). The owners praise "diverse and untouched natural locations, production infrastructure and the momentum of the largest media group in the country" and "competitive labour and construction rates, in a country where woodworking is a local tradition". Other pluses are English and French speaking crews and, significantly, the "longest working week in Europe - 10-hours/day, 6 days/week". The studios have 12 stages (two more in construction), the largest being 4,000 square metres. The 30-hectare property contains two forests (with a picturesque palace which belonged to one of the powerful aristocratic Romanian families before the Second World War, the Stirbey Palace), as well as a large natural lake and four water tanks for underwater filming. All of this only 14km away from the Otopeni International Airport and 20km north-west of Bucharest.

But clearly the attraction of the Buftea studios is the low cost of production. "Shooting a movie here is between 30 and 60% cheaper than in the Czech Republic, Hungary or the United Kingdom," Romanescu says. Partly this is down to the low wages of crews, partly to the low cost of construction materials used in manufacturing scenery.

Patrick Taulere, a French director working in the US, is currently shooting a historical documentary, Boudica, in the Media Pro Pictures studios. He politely cites "amazing location, amazing actors and amazing crew" as the main reasons for choosing to shoot the movie at Buftea. But he swiftly adds that the price of production is important. "How much would it cost to do it at Hollywood? A lot more," he says.

This is the second Boudica movie shot at Buftea. The first, for the UK television company ITV, was produced in 2002.

Taulere says that the story of a great queen of ancient Britain fighting against the Roman Emperor Nero in around 50AD, lends itself to a combination of documentary and fiction. In his production, Boudica's husband Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, is played by a Romanian actor, Adrian Pintea, and two more young Romanian actors are part of the cast.

Two more movies are currently being shot at Buftea: Jacquou le Croquant, by Laurent Boutonnat, for Pathé Productions, to be on the screens in the first months of 2006, and a Romanian movie.

The first big movie produced at Media Pro Productions was Amen, by the Greek-born, France-based director Costa Gavras, a strong condemnation of those powers, including in the Vatican, who kept silent about the Holocaust's atrocities. The Vatican scenes were shot in Nicolae Ceausescu's megalomaniac 'People's Palace', now the seat of the parliament in Bucharest.

Zeffirelli's decision to shoot Callas Forever in Buftea the following year made the fortune of the studios, bringing it to the attention of producers in France, Italy, the UK and the US.

As well as movies, Media Pro Pictures produce music clips (pop star Anastasia's latest clip was shot in Buftea), TV shows, TV soaps and commercials.

On most of the studio's stages, parts of the set-up for recent movies can still be identified.

"A stage can be changed very quickly: within two days, we can transform antique Rome to a house of the future," says Romanescu.

A quick tour of the studios reveals a corner of Paris at the beginning of the century, set up for Mick Davis's Modigliani.

The next street is 16th century London, created for Gunpowder, Treason and Plot (a production for the BBC) next to a pyramid created for a Romanian movie Femeia visurilor (Dream Woman), by Dan Pita.

Since the envied netting of the Cold Mountain production by Castel Film, the Romanian studios have been busy promoting themselves as the new base for Eastern European film production.

But insiders say that while Romania and Bulgaria may be luring a few large productions, they will essentially be home to low budget productions. They say that many filmmakers are still going to prefer the Czech Republic or the UK, because of a reputation for quality.

The managers of Romania's largest studios, built initially to satisfy the cinema dreams of the country's communist leader, are having to prove themselves in a competitive capitalist marketplace.

Article reports on the increasing attraction of Eastern European countries on Hollywood film companies as locations for the low-cost production of films. Author portrays the Buftea studios in Romania, which have been especially successful.