Stone Wedding

40th anniversary screening! New 35mm print!

This cult classic of the Romanian cinema (included in MoMA's collection) is comprised of two separate stories of different tone, set in the same small town in the Apuseni mountains, both with a wedding as a central story point and the timeless quality of old folktales. The first part (Fefeleaga, directed by the late Mircea Veroiu) is a highly stylized account of a widow who’s working hard in a desperate attempt to save her dying daughter—bleak, slow and beautifully shot in black-and-white in the stark mode we've since come to associate with Bela Tarr. The second (At a Wedding, directed by Dan Pita), more naturalistic and not lacking in comedy, tells the story of two wandering singers who kidnap a bride from her wedding. Celebrating 40 years since its release, Stone Wedding deserves to be discovered or revisited. It is an almost wordless poem, enriched by a strange soundtrack that adds a haunting dimension to these tales of survival, escape and incidental tragedy.