https://octavianrepede.ro/

Independent director, screenwriter, video-editor and cinematographer. President of the Association for film and literature  “Nova Polaris “  of Sibiu, Romania. Born in 1985. With a rich background in videography and journalism and television studies. Still in love with the sea, ancient history and astronautics.

The productions written and directed by me are distributed on various world-wide streaming channels (like Amazon Prime Video, Tubi tv, Midwest Tape(DVD copies), Vudu, Cineverse, Plex TV, Roku Channel, Herogo TV, Future Today, Yow.tv, KNG TV, EAND, Telus tv+, TCL, PlayNowMedia, etc.) and also were broadcast on local and regional Romanian TV stations. Over time they have also collected national and international awards at film festivals (with screenings in various corners of the world such as New York, Seoul, Munich, Florianopolis, Moscow, Rome, Doncaster, Saigon, Bucharest, Brasov, Cuzco. Short, medium and some feature films, fiction and documentary, oriented on various subjects and genres (mostly Arthouse Sci-Fi, Mythology and mystery, History).

As a brief history of my development as a filmmaker I can say that, of course, it all started from childhood, when a large home library, long summer vacations and a family with constant interest for writing, music and photography (my father wrote poetry, detective novels, chess book, etc.) made me believe in the universe of art as something palpable, noble and desirable. I remember how my father was “correcting” the poems of mine aunt, also a writer, or when I and him were developing black and white photo negatives under the red light, in the cellar. There, the magic of photography happens when the photographic paper dip into the chemical solution tray and the image appears for the first time. (During the 90s, photographic development was still used). Also we had a long tail piano with bronze plate at my grandparents’ house, on which not knowing how to play it, we children were composing “cosmic music”… what a good tool for the movie soundtrack scoring today! And of course also at home, a retro audio-video universe. Music was constantly playing at home. Hundreds of pirated and re-recorded tapes, vinyl, tape recorder and a VHS video player, which in Romania’s late `80 it was hard to find.
As a teenager I experienced the digital revolution in photo-video technology of the 2000`s, and practically with the help of a PC and a capture graphic card, a tape camcorder, you could had your own television studio. No film reels, photochemical laboratory, edit room, so on. Practically, television and cinema have been liberalized. More and more independent filmmakers have appeared in Romania. And that’s how I appeared. At the age of 16 I was fascinated by the fact that you can create visually a new world, in motion, practically from nothing, just the PC. I experimented with 3D rendering software modeling fractal landscape. (I was dreaming then for an exotic beach with palm trees and blue lagoon vacantions and adventurous sea voyages)☺. In fact for a lot of times I have used the pseudonym of  Christian Flecther, after the story of a British sailor who went on a long voyage in the 18th century and settled forever in Tahiti. Anyway, “Bryce” was the software’s name and I have spent some time with it, facing the long rendering times of the Pentium’s CPU-s of that time… But later, I chose to turn to the reality and shoot videos, not generate them CGI! A big turning point. And that’s because I was involuntarily experiencing the feeling that a moving image recorded somewhere, can save a moment from vanishing. So we have to film people, places, eras to overcome our oblivion and disappearance. I am still seduced by film archives.
Later, when my brother was already working in television I started filming and learning to operate a camera. ENG-cameras (electronic news gathering cameras), mostly. It also seemed “cool” to be a cameraman at 20 years old. I remember at college, I had read the instructions manual of a Sony DSR PD 170-P camera in one night… But being a great cameraman means much more than knowing the technique of a camera. Next, it came 10 years of hard work videography for me, learning and studying extensively everything I found regarding cinema and video, parallel to developing my indie projects with the colleagues of Nova Polaris NGO.
For all the films produced and directed by me I have worked with very small production teams, something that helped and disadvantaged me at the same time. But I was kind of ambitious. Tudor Porumb for the image and Alexandru Repede on the music and sound, were the colleagues who helped me the most. During the editing, hundreds of nights lost in front of the monitors, revisions over revisions, technical “bugs” of all kinds, that was the price paid to put a story online. For more or less critics viewers. As an independent filmmaker I’ve always had the freedom to choose the subject of my films, to document and design it in my way. (I mean the genre, style, pace, duration, etc.) and I think I should be grateful for that. Stories, were deeply inspired by my or others life and the preproduction time was always important to me and demanded solid study. I have always believed that an original idea poorly executed is more valuable than a good execution without originality. Many times I had the opportunity to attack big topics, in experimental formats or novel formulas, sometimes under the expectations of already formed audiences. As an independent, although I didn’t always have the desired filming budgets, the top-notch equipment or the dreamt distribution, I always had the freedom to do things as I felt and not as they were imposed to me by some marketing limits. So, for every movie I could completely resonate with the theme of the film. And I had the satisfaction of being immersed for months in the universe of a story. Being deeply fascinated and dedicated to my work. Sometimes I exaggerated but as Freud said “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” And without passion you cannot achieve great things!
Thanks once again to all with whom I have team up and who gave me a helping hand without asking something in return. More to come in the future. Good light everyone!