In Memoriam Alex Leo Şerban

Acclaimed Romanian film critic Alex Leo Şerban, an outstanding personality of the contemporary Romanian cinema, died at the age of 51 - on Friday, April 8th, 2011.

Leo was part of the Anim'est jury in 2009, together with Swiss animator Georges Schwizgebel and French producer Guilaine Bergeret. A well-known critic, essay and fiction writer, literary translator, visual artst and editorialist, he was voted The Favorite Film Critic of Romanian Film lovers in a poll made by the biggest national cinema portal, Cinemagia.ro. He was one of the most important and dearest friends of the Anim'est International Animation Film Festival and the Estenest Cultural Association.

Born on June 28th, 1959, Alex Leo Şerban graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Bucharest in 1983. He was awarded a grant from the French Ministry of Culture in 1992, he was an "International Visitor" in the US in 1996, and he also benefited from a also a GE/NEC grant in 2003 and 2004. Starting 1982, his texts were published in most of Romanian cultural magazines and newspapers (România literară, Secolul 20, Luceafărul, Contrapunct, Litere, Arte & Idei, Lettre internationale, Ideea, Idei in Dialog, Observator Cultural, Suplimentul de Cultură etc.). He also wrote for a few important foreign publications, such as Cahiers du Cinema, Cover Magazine and Film Comment. He also held fashion & cinema columns for mainstream papers and magazines, such as Elle, Libertatea or Ziarul de Duminică.

He was the only Romanian film critic to be invited in Bernard Pivot's TV show Double Je (2004). Producer and presenter of the cinema show Fotograme, on the Cultural channel of the Romanian National Television (2005-2006). He was invited to take conferences at the Lincoln Center, the universities of Umea, Humboldt, Pittsburgh and the Romanian National Theatre, and he was also a Lecturer fot the National University of Film & Drama "I.L. Caragiale" in Bucharest. He presented the Lucian Pintilie Retrospective in London (2004), he was a curator and presenter for Romanian Cinema: A Journey - the Romanian film festival organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute in London (2007) and the Shining Through a Long, Dark Night retrospective at the Lincoln Center in 2008.

During the years, he was a member of the jury for many important festivals across Europe and the world, including the ones in Cluj-Napoca (Transilvania), Thessaloniki, Lisbon or London. He was a member of FIPRESCI - The International Federation of Film Journalists and Critics.
 
Together with Mihai Chirilov and Ştefan Bălan, he wrote & published in 2004 Lars von Trier: Films, women and ghosts. Other volumes he published include Robinson's Dietetics; Why We Watch Movies (2006), but also the antology 4 decades, 3 years and 2 months with Romanian cinema. He translated essays, poems, short stories and novels by authors such as W.H. Auden, Jean Baudrillard, Samuel Beckett, Paul Bowles, Don DeLillo, Benoît Duteurtre, Mathieu Lindon, Vladimir Nabokov, Susan Sontag, Paul Bowles, Yasmina Reza or Martin Sherman.