Saturday, January 9, 2010

Government says movie theaters will have to provide Romanian subtitles, breaking virtual monopoly of Russian dubbing in the country

Prime Minister Vlad Filat asked Culture Minister Boris Focsa today to put together regulations imposing movie theaters in the country to use Romanian subtitles.

Currently, virtually all movie theaters in Moldova release films dubbed in Russian, citing free market reasons for this policy. Russian-dubbed films are cheaper, they say, and most people in Moldova prefer them to ones subtitled in Romanian.

Recently, a Facebook group advocating the boycott of Patria, the largest movie theater chain in the country, managed to attract more than 1,000 members. Patria releases films dubbed in Russian.

In the past, Chisinau also had a small movie theater that released films in their original language (mostly English), which Russian dubbing available through headphones. The theater seems to have gone out of business, however.

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