Film director Cristi Puiu told a conference hosted by the Romanian Academy on Tuesday that his path to the cinema passed through painting, and that his transition to film 'happened out of curiosity', while he never fully abandoned his art studio.

Speaking on Tuesday at the conference 'Why Do I Film? The Filmmaker - Another Administrator, Another Jonah Caught Between Scylla and Charybdis', he reflected on his beginnings in painting and how he was later drawn to cinematography.

The director admitted that he has never considered himself a filmmaker, and that his relationship with film was born from his position as a viewer.

'If I were to speak about cinema, I would only do so from the perspective of someone who makes films, which would also make me kind of impostor, because I have never regarded myself as a filmmaker. (...) As for my relationship with film, it was born rather from what I consider my legitimate position as a viewer; I never dreamed of becoming a director. I read about various directors who wanted to become filmmakers from an early age - that never happened to me. All I wanted my entire life was to paint. Me becoming a filmmaker was an accident: First, I failed the entrance exam to the ‘Tonitza' High School. That moment changed me in a rather strange way, and if I had not later met Matei Serban Sandu, I might have never returned to painting and perhaps I might have never become a filmmaker. In my case, the road to cinema passed through painting. (...) Fate first led me to painting and only later to cinema, yet I never completely left the studio,' Cristi Puiu recounted.

He said he had never intended to make films or become a director - 'it simply happened, out of curiosity'.

'I think I should clarify this idea of the filmmaker. I don't know who the filmmaker is in general; I only know who I am and why I make films. That is something I do know -- how I came to make films. I did not set out to become a director; it just happened, out of curiosity, when I was a first-year student in Geneva. I began by studying painting and, because it was an atypical school, the National School of Visual Arts also had a film department. After the first year, I decided to take the exam for film because I wanted to learn something else. Staying in the painting department... well, there was not much left to learn there. You are always learning, of course, but at some point you have to leave school, go to your studio and learn on your own, search for your voice, articulate your thoughts and gradually build a story about yourself. (...) Curiosity pushed me towards cinema, and it was curiosity that guided my subsequent steps. After returning from Switzerland, I did not think I would be able to make films in Romania for various reasons, mostly related to how the field was administered and how one might obtain funding, so I remained, in a way, in the studio. That is what I did - I painted,' the director added.

He also said that his encounter with cinema initially came through a path that kept him, in a way, closer to painting, until a break eventually occurred.

Speaking about what he considers the most difficult thing for a director, Cristi Puiu quoted Steven Spielberg.

'Spielberg was once asked what the hardest thing for a director is, and he answered: ‘getting out of the car'. I thought - yes, that's true. It is the hardest thing for a director. Every day of shooting, you arrive on set and you have to get out of the car. If you get out, you make the film; if you don't, you don't. And you know what happened yesterday, and you know that today you will start again, going through the same nightmare and ordeal of translating your intentions for the actor, the cinematographer, the set designer, for everyone involved in this creative process,' Puiu said.

The director added that 'cinema, like all the other arts, is ultimately a form of self-knowledge'.

'I will soon turn 59, and I think that at this age I can truly say - or age allows me to say - that I was mistaken in believing that I make films because the ineffable fuels this desire, and that I truly want to make films because what drives fiction, what makes an image alive, what gives a story fluidity, meaning and substance is chance, accident, the ineffable. But I think it is more than that. For someone like me, who has not found his place, I believe the only answer to the question ‘Why do I film today, now, at this age?' is that I have chosen a roundabout path home,' Cristi Puiu added.

Born on April 3, 1967, in Bucharest, Cristi Puiu is a screenwriter and director, best known for the film 'The Death of Mr Lazarescu~, which marked the beginning of the Romanian New Wave in cinema. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Petronius Craiu; EN - writing by: Cristina Zaharia)