holidayat the seaside

holidayat theseasidesynopsis

Amalia, a girl of 13, gets her first period one day before leaving to the seaside with her parents. Having a strict and conservative mother, Ama-lia is commited to take the matter into her own hands, without telling her mother. While trying to solve the ‘problem’ by herself, she doesn’t notice that her parents are not even talking to eachother and are on the point of fall-ing apart.

What should have been an ordinary family va-cation, becomes a mother-daughter quest. To find themselves, and then, each other.

holidayat theseasidetreatment

Amalia is thirteen and a half. She lives with her parents in a small city in Transilvania, Romania. They live in a flat, in a typical com-munist block of flats. The family is part of the Romanian lower middle class. Her mother is a conservative woman who has be-come stricter, fearing she might lose control over her daughter, once she has become a teenager.Having married young, Amalia’s parents are now on the brink of separation. The father has a new girlfriend. Both parents keep postponing telling Amalia the truth. They have planned a last fam-ily trip, a holiday at the seaside.

It is evening. Amalia’s mother is packing, her father is watching TV, sitting adamantly in his sofa. The mother is left alone, respon-sible with the planning of the trip. Every now and then she tries to urge the man to start packing and helping around. Amalia’s mother barges in Amalia’s room every now and then, never considering to knock. Amalia looks into a kaleidoscope, which she rotates and shakes, to form new shapes. She had start-ed packing hours before, but is easily distracted. Amalia’s mother comes into her room, presenting her with a new swimming suit: white, to protect her from heat, and in once piece, so there’s less chance of sunburn. And less chance of attracting young boys’ looks. But that, the mother keeps to herself.Amalia decides she hates the new swimwear, and defies her mother, playing with it, stretching it and aiming at the mother, as if the suit were a slingshot. The swimsuit lands in the corner of the room, hitting a lamp, and irritating the mother. Amalia is sent to shower, and then, to sleep.

Amalia locks herself in the bathroom. While taking a shower, she notices a delicate trace of blood flowing away between her legs. The trace strengthens.

Amalia turns off the water, and examines the liquid. She stoops down on her knees. The blood mixes with the water, resulting into a pale pink liquid. Amalia touches it with her finger, gently, curi-ously. Then she starts drawing waves into the pink liquid. The silence is interrupted by her mother’s knocking on the door. Amalia needs to speed up.

Faced with her first period and a rather distant mother, Amalia decides to handle this on her own. She puts on a towel and climbs on the toilet, to reach the top drawer. She finds a box of tampons. She opens it to see it’s almost empty. She takes the last tampon into her hands, examines it. Her mother knocks again. Startled, she drops the tampon into the toilet. A bit disgusted, she takes out the tampon, and throws it into the waste bin. A few seconds later, she recovers the tampon from the waste bin, covers it in toilet paper, takes half of the waste bin’s content out, only to be able to cover the tampon with waste. Anything not to attract attention.

Amalia returns to her room and clears everything from the top of her bed. She then covers her bed with a dozen pairs of underwear. She tries one on. Without taking it off, she puts another one.

She takes a pair of white socks. She folds them neatly and they start to resemble a panty liner. She then places the socks as pantyliners, between the 1st and 2nd layer of underwear. She gets dressed and opens a couple of books, where she keeps her savings, in between the pages. She throws another glance in the mirror. She looks normal, but walking seems to be difficult. She turns off the light, opens the window. Although the flat is on the ground floor, Amelia manages to jump right into a big bush, that tears half of her skirt, and scratches her left knee.

Amelia is off to the small supermarket in the neighborhood. The saleswoman at the counter is one of her neighbors, the mother’s acquaintance. Amalia says she’s looking for bread, which surpris-es the saleswoman, as Amalia’s mother had shopped for bread, that very evening. Another customer enters the supermarket and Amalia discreetly makes her way to the feminine care aisle. She examines a small pack of tampons. She looks around, and care-fully puts the pack in her pocket. The woman at the counter urges Amalia not to mess around. Shocked that the woman might have seen her, Amalia wants to leave the store. The woman hasn’t seen anything, she is merely urging Amelia to go home, as it is getting late. Distressed, Amalia grabs a small bread, pays for it, and leaves, while the woman is trying to make conversation.

She climbs through the window, back into the room. She puts on a tampon, and tries her old swimming suit, a colorful bikini. Her mother checks on Amalia. Distressed, they get into an argument and Amalia throws the white new swimming suit on the hallway.

Rejected and upset, her mother approaches the father, who is on the phone with someone, talking discreetly. The mother insists he got off the phone, and they get into an argument. The mother expects support and paternal behaviour while the father is fed up with family conflicts. He decides to call of his holiday with the fam-ily, putting all the responsibility of telling Amalia the truth, on the shoulders of the mother. He leaves, and the mother bursts into tears, burying her face in the white swimming suit.

It is morning. Amalia and her mother are now on the train. The mother is checking for the tickets, phone, keys, money. She rest-lessly checks her phone for messages, waiting for a last decisive sign from the father. She looks tired and cried out. Amalia notices the distressed state her mother is in. It frightens her, as she has never seen her in this state before.In an attempt to comfort her, she mentions having brought the new swim suit along in her luggage. It is Amalia’s first step towards her mother, but the woman is too distressed to realize that. Amalia steps out on the hallway and watches the platform disappearing into the horizon. She, too, is secretly hoping to see a familiar face run after the train.

In their hotel room by the sea, Amalia is playing with a cup of her favorite yogurt. She opens it, but instead of eating it herself, she hands it over to her mother. She accepts it, smilingly. On the table, in the room, there’s a loaf of bread and the small pack of tampons. Having learned about her daughter’s menstruation, the mother is comfronted with a deep sense of guilt, for not having paid enough attention to her daughter.

At the beach, Amalia is building a sand castle. In the background, on the shore, her mother is gathering sea shells. Amalia gets a phone call from her father. She hesitates, her mother looks dis-turbed, but then takes the call, telling him they’re ‘very well’. The mother looks surprised and is comforted by her daughter’s open-ness and optimism. Amalia takes the white swimming suit out of a bag, and in an attempt to amuse her mother, puts it on her head, as a turban, remembering she had promised to ‘wear’ the swim-ming suit. When the castle is ready, they put a thick branch as the castle’s tower, and tie a colorful towel to it, as a flag.

THE END

holidayat theseasidedirector’s statement

Amalia’s story in “Holiday at the Seaside” is a delightful privilege to draw the portrait of a girl and a woman, while their lives are changing at full speed.Whether drawing a portrait of Amalia through the ob-jects and colors in her room, while she’s staring oblivi-ously at the other world in the kaleidoscope, or through what Amalia does and says, life is there, fluttering, pounding with change. It is not the mere fact of the first menstruation, that marks the beginning of adulthood, but the responsibili-ty Amalia takes on, in trying to solve things by herself.The story of Amalia’s mother would give the viewers the bitter and melancholic counterpoint to the amusing efforts of the girl. A beautiful woman in her mid 30ies faced with a divorce, learns how to land on her feet from her teen daughter. I am passionate about portraiture, both visually and narratively. The traits of our faces and the mo-ments that make up our life, end up being one and the same thing. “Holiday at the Seaside” gives me that precise opportunity, to talk about people, and compose their portraits.My intention with “Holiday at the Seaside” is to explore humanity, in its deep, varied ways: when was the mo-ment we stopped being children, and what unplanned unforseen changes await for us, as adults. And when they happen, what do we do with those changes.

holidayat theseasidetechnicalspecs.

holiday at the seaside (working title)

expected duration: 15-17 min.genre: comedy/dramacountry: Romanialanguage: Romanianplanned filming locations:Transylvania/Romanian Black Sea/North Seashooting format: digital (Alexa/RED)

holidayat theseasidedirector’s biography

cristina groşanb. 1987, Arad, Romaniacurently living in Budapest, Hungary

education2006-2010, babes bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, RomaniaFaculty of theatre & televisionDept. of Cinematography, Photography & Mediagraduated with film direction

2008-2009, yeditepe University, istanbulVisual Communication Departmentexchange programme

2010-(2012, expected) moholy-nagyUniversity of art, Budapest, HungaryDepartment of Visual CommunicationMaster in Media Design

professional activity2006-2010, freelance photographer2006-2008, intern reporter at local Romanian TV stations2011-present, creative director at Daazo.com -the European Shortfilm Centre

filmographycoca-cola love, 2011, (director), in development (grad-uation film)holiday at the seaside, 2011, (director), in developmentsputnik, 2010 (director), HD, 13 min.a Wonderful life, 2009 (director), SD, 17 min.Supermarket, 2009 (cinematographer), HD, 10 min.express delivery service, 2009 (co-writer, co-director), HD, 11 min.Man in a Room, 2009 (director), 35mm, 3 min.Felix sativa, 2006 (co-writer), HD, 30 min.

workshops & training (selection)2011, participating as director at the reykjavik interna-tional Film Festival as guest of the Talent Lab2011, participating as director at the sarajevo talent Campus, organized by the Sarajevo Film Festival2011, participating as director at the berlinale talent Campus, organized by the Berlinale Film Festival2011, Gained a one year membership in the national student Jury for Hungarian film festivals2010, Cannes Film Festival, NISI MASA workshop2009, “Stop by. Shoot Film” Kodak cinematography work-shop at Transylvanian International Film Festival2008, Sound Design for cinema, Babes Bolyai university workshop

exhibitions & collaborative work (selection)2011, “Just a magazine”- the summer edition, Romanian culture & lifestyle magazine, text & photography contributor

2011, “Found things”, individual photography exhibition, Budapest, Hungary

2011, “mdma vs. actress bajor gizi”, col-lective contemporary art exhibition, Budapest, Hungary

2010, “subjective atlas of budapest” an ini-tiative by Kitchen Budapest Innovation & Re-search Lab- collective art book, participating as a photographer

2009, “polaroid effect”, collective instant pho-tography exhibition, Romania

2007, “phototherapy”, collective photography exhibition at the Transylvanian Film Festival, Romania

contactgrosan.cristina@gmail.com+36 203 101 360