Film Courage: Josephina, you grew up in Romania?
Josephina Sykes, Filmmaker: Yes.
Film Courage: Off-camera you were telling some interesting things about movie going in general during the time you were there?
Josephina: It’s a lot to talk about but I can tell you it was censorship going on (a lot of censorship). Obviously, I did not grow up with a lot of Hollywood movies that were modern. Basically I was watching a lot of Romanian movies that were made in Romania or other communist made movies. So more like Hollywood movies from the 40’s, musicals, dramas and things like that. But not a lot of mainstream movies like ROCKY or John Hughes movies or things that I had to catch up with after I moved here. Also no horror movies because those were forbidden during communism because the dictator that we had didn’t want to be compared to one of the monsters like Dracula or Frankenstein from the horror movies, but of course because still compared him with that. So that is why he banned all of the horror movies at that time. Once again, that’s kind of strange because I am making horror movies but I didn’t grow up with that. Obviously I had a lot of catching up to do after I moved here and started to work in the industry…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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