Andrei Tanase

Tell us a little about how you ended up aboard the Cine-train project While attending NISI MASA’s European Short Pitch 2008 in France, I found out about the idea of a filmmaking workshop taking place in Russia, on the Trans-Siberian route. Shooting a film while traveling almost 10 000 km, through Siberia, on a train - it sounded more than exciting. When the project became official, I applied right away.

What about the team you were part of? Did it work smoothly? Well, it wasn’t a walk in the park, that’s for sure. When you have to team up with two people you never met, shoot and complete a film in less than 3 weeks while constantly moving around, in a country you’ve never been to, where people speak a language you don’t understand, there’s little chance to make it work smoothly. Florian, George and I had our ups and downs in the process but we managed to stay “on the same page” even if sometimes our views on the topic were quite different. The film was done and that’s what matters the most.

Where did your idea come from and what was your strategy? I once read a news article about the rapidly-growing fast-food industry in Eastern Europe. I was surprised to find out that Russia is the country where McDonalds has the most stable business and each of their restaurants has three times more customers than in European countries. After a few online meetings with the team, we all agreed to find out why Russian people like hamburgers so much. After the first days of shooting I realized that the ‘classic’ investigation film approach was not the way to go. The footage we had at that point was predicting a quite boring film. While having a burger & fries with my team in a fast-food restaurant in Ekaterinburg, I decided to change the concept and spice up the story by telling it as if it was a personal video travel journal. Florian, the German sound designer of our team was going to play the main character: a young economics student determined to do a video market research in order to pass one of his exams.

Was your short presented at other screenings beside the ones during the tour? Mc Russia was never screened individually. I don’t know if the film works on its own, outside the project context. The six Cine-train films are strongly connected and they hardly make sense if watched separately.

Was this experience rewarding for you as an emerging filmmaker? I learned a lot about myself as a filmmaker and as a person while taking part in this project. Working with unknown people, in unknown territories is a great exercise for a film director. It challenges you on many levels: communication skills, diplomacy, staying calm and focusing in stressful situations. It’s a great way to test your capacities and discover your limits. It doesn’t really matter if the results are different than what you were expecting. Workshops are about teaching, practicing and testing, not creating masterpieces. Cine-train made me rediscover the pleasure of documentary filmmaking, raw and simple as it should be, and reconfirmed the reasons that made me “choose” this profession. And on top of that I got to ride the legendary Trans-Siberian train – a dream come true!

By Mark Racz