Ekphrasis

Recycling and Confronting Ostalgie under the Romanian Transition. I’m an Old Communist Hag – an Unfaithful Adaptation

Claudiu TURCUȘ

Abstract:

Using a comparative and intermedial approach, this paper aims: 1. to outline a typological overview of several literary and cinematic modes of representing communism in the Romanian society after 1989, highlighting, at the same time, the identitarian clichés pertaining to the transition that are inherent therein; 2. to focus analytically on Dan Lungu’s novel I’m an Old Communist Hag! (2007) and the homonymous flm directed by Stere Gulea (2013), examined in terms of communist nostalgia, a theme that is present in both artistic products; 3. to theoretically circumscribe the type of adaptation particularized by Gulea’s cinematic rendition, by reference to the concept of the “ethics of infdelity” (Leitch 2010).

Keywords: post-communist nostalgia, adaptation, identity, Romanian transition, Dan Lungu, Stere Gulea