18-06-2012

PRODUCTION: Iho in Production

By Iulia Blaga

    {mosimage}BUCHAREST: Eliza Zdru is shooting Iho, a 52 minute documentary on four elderly Aromanians from Cogealac, a small village near Constanţa, Romania, who sing polyphonic archaic music. ("Iho" means "melody" in the Aromanian dialect.).

    The film will be a road movie following Nicolae Zogu (80), Vasile Giogi (82), Dumitru Zogu (81) and Mihai Gherase (79) performing concerts throughout Romania and abroad, to France and Greece - where the trip of their ancestors to Romania started many years ago.

    Bogdan Pălici is producing through ViraFilms, in partnership with Avdhela Project - The Library of the Aromanian Culture. This is an independent project. "No institution or grants are involved yet, and most of the funding for shooting came from people with Aromanian roots," Pălici told FNE. The total budget is 80,000 Euro, and another 60,000 Euro is needed.

    Iho is the first Romanian project launched with crowd funding (www.indiegogo.com/iho). Individual funding started at 10 USD, but only 275 USD of the goal of 11,000 USD was raised 14 days before the closing date. „From now on we are putting our hopes on the next pitching sessions of StoryDoc (www.storydoc.gr) and the East European Forum (http://www.dokweb.net/en/east-european-forum) and East Silver Market (www.eastsilver.net), both set up by the Institute of Documentary Film (www.dokweb.net)," Pălici told FNE.

    The project was recently awarded Best Project at 2012 Dragon Forum (dragonforum.pl) organized by Arkana Studio (www.arkanastudio.pl), and it was invited by the Institute of Documentary Film to take part in the next sessions of East European Forum and East Silver Market. The project also participated in the first session of the training program StoryDoc in Athens early June 2012 where it received a scholarship for the second session in Lepzig next October. Eliza Zdru told FNE that she wants to have the film finished in December, but it will depend on financing.

    Production Information

    ViraFilms

    Calea Plevnei, 44, ap 44, sector 1

    București, România

    Mobile phone Bogdan Pălici: +40.735.549.584

    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

    Credits

    Director: Eliza Zdru

    DOP: Marius Beşu

    Editor: Alexandru Radu