Short

ABC ... Why?

click here to see more (in Romanian) Artistic director ABC. . . Why? I am quite familiar with puppets: as a stage director I have put on a few puppet shows, and at home I've got a live one. Now I am experiencing great joy: after seven years of television work, I'm

The Story Of Pillet

The idea of founding a puppet theatre as a means of improving health education among children, and the relationship between doctors and their little patients came from a long way off. I had read a book by Sergey Obraztsov, one of the best known and appreciated Russian puppeteers.

Creangă And Gopo

Gopo's Little Man (see Short History - click on Scurta istorie to see movie) I have been studying the Gopo archive belonging to the National Film Archive for some years, and now the first volume goes to print. It contains only a part of the legacy left by the film genius,

From The Musical Folklore Of Children To The Comic Opera For Children

In 1954, the great Romanian ethnomusicologist Constantin Brăiloiu (1893-1958) held a scientific presentation at Colloque de Wegimont in Belgium that amazed all specialists present in the audience, because it unsettled all theories regarding the musical culture of children

Clockwork Animals

Mom and Dad weren't well-off or anything and, apart from that, the 60s offered only a limited choice of toys, at least in our neck of the woods. Back when he was working for the Maintenance Department of the Bucharest Transport Services, Dad would bring me – on Father

What I Did In The Summer Holidays

excerpt  Then on another day I didnt get up to much apart from loafing around the house aimlessly and especially up in the apricot tree where dad didnt know I could climb and get away with it because what does he know? He comes home in the evening and if he plays with

The Erstwhile Snows

Winters in Ramnicu Valcea were quite mild in those times, though there was plenty of snow (I guess this is the cliché of those whose childhood memories are blurred by their excessive subjectivity); anyway, they unfolded following a certain ritual: at the beginning of December

Toys And Games As Seen By Children And Parents

excerpts In 1888, popular health magazines would dedicate generous coverage to children's games, at the top of their education column. The main endeavor of parents must reside in the education of their infants from their very first day of life onwards, for health,

The High School Kids

The movie made after the novel (aka The Graduates, 1987, directed by Nicolae Corjos, b. 1935 - click here to see fragment) – a simple, old story (a young man, Mihai, comes to the big city – Bucharest – to learn in high school, where his passion for math and philosophy

I Once Was A Child: School

Between September 15 and June 15, every child's life was hijacked by school. School was the children's only officially-sanctioned pursuit. Their only obligation. None of us got any thrill out of getting up early, eyes heavy with sleep, and trudging all the way

A Detail

END OF THE LAST TRIMESTER. Shortly before holidays, Radu and Dan are learning. To be precisely: they study. Even more precisely: they study zoology. With his head between his hands, balancing on the front feet of his chair, Radu reads aloud: The camel is a vertebrate mammal,

Cismigiu & Co.

excerpt  Among our scholarly workmates three or four quickly distinguished themselves, and they would compete against each other for first place in our class. Our former prize winning classmate, Motas Constantin, had moved to a science class. Now two pupils, Ciurea Constantin