
Irina Margareta Nistor (born 26 March 1957) is a Romanian translator and film critic.
Biography
Nistor worked as a translator of TV programs in
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
under the Communist regime, and is known for secretly dubbing over 1,000 banned movie titles on VHS tapes smuggled in from the West in the four years between 1985 and the revolution. During the time of the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, these tapes quickly spread throughout Romania, and her voice became widely known throughout the country. In a recent ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' video about Nistor, one of the interviewees observes: "We did start to wonder why all the films were dubbed by the same voice… (Nistor’s) is the most well known voice in Romania after
Ceaușescu’s...”
Nistor worked for The Romanian Television from 1980 until 1999, first as a film translator, then as a program producer.
In 1993, she produced, in French, for TV5 Europe a one-hour program called “The Romanian Cinema after 1989”.
Nistor is featured in the documentary ''
Chuck Norris vs Communism'', directed by
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
-based Romanian filmmaker,
Ilinca Calugareanu.
Its European premiere was at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 24 and 25 June 2015. The film was screened at the Hawaii European Cinema: Hawaii's European Film Festival on 17 October 2015. The film also screened at Cinequest 2016, in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...
, USA.
Nistor remains active within the Romanian film industry. In 2012, she launched the ''Psychoanalysis and Film Festival'', headed by psychoanalyst
Andrea Sabbadini, which was the Romanian extension of the ''European Psychoanalytic Film Festival'' presided by Italian director
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci ( ; ; 16 March 1941 – 26 November 2018) was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved inte ...
.
For nine years, she has presented a weekly one-hour Sunday program on Radio Guerrilla, ''The Voice of the Movies''.
In 2006, she published a book about her mentor, film critic D.I. Suchianu.
She was an
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...
adviser and a member of the screenplay jury in film financing procedures of the Romanian National Fund of Cinematography.
She has also been the film selector for the DaKINO international film festival.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nistor, Irina Margareta
Romanian film critics
Women film critics
Romanian propagandists
1957 births
Living people
Romanian translators
Romanian biographers
Romanian women biographers