IONUT PITURESCU

Ionut Piturescu is a Romanian film-maker and researcher. Among his studies he finished a BA in Linguistics-Ethnology, a MA in Cultural Anthropology and a Phd in Sociology, all comprising Visual Anthropology focus, including photo essays and documentary films.

Among other awards for films, photos and scripts, in 2010 his film Quest (30 min) was premiered and received the Quinzaines des Realisateurs Award at Cannes Film Festival.

In his previous work he focused on themes regarding collective identity constructions, systems of representation, human rights, non-conflictual and sustainable development in tensed or conflict areas. Investigating these issues, he has done explorative field researches concerning communities under political, social and economic strain in: Mexico, Morocco, USA, southern Spain and Italy, South-East Asia, Arctic area, South-East Europe along field researches in Romania.

He was teaching Audio-Visual Techniques at Faculty of Communication Science in Bucharest and collaborated as researcher and film-maker with institutions such as Open Society Foundations, Geomedia Research Center, Ministry of Culture, Consultancy Center for Cultural Projects, Sarajevo City of Film, Dox:Lab at Cph:Dox and others.

5 years ago he established an independent film production and cross-cultural research center: Anthropoesis. 3 days ago, one of his projects dedicated to the Balkans conflicting identities just amazingly won the highly unwinnable national competition of the national film fund. And this is most relevant since the institution of the national cinema fund is entirely corrupted, leaving almost no hope for high quality independent projects and Ionut did not know anybody in the respective mafia, but quite on the contrary.

Ionut skills rely on his additional academic studies and trainings. He has studied Mathematics and Computer Programming all along his school, college and first years of faculty, participating in Mathematics and Computer Programming competitions at highest possible environment within the best classes and with the best professors in Romania, one of the top countries in these fields at world level. He has studied History of Arts, Philosophy and Theater Directing with some of the most prestigious professors in Romania. In his researches around the world he participated in numerous courses and trainings with excellent professors in various domains, but in the same time he has pursued pioneering field researches, living in deeply grass-roots circumstances, working side by side and integrating totally the harsh life of the people, researched in connection with hardly accessible themes.