The cinema of Moldova developed in the early 1960s during the Soviet period, experiencing a flowering of about a decade and a half. Stagnation followed, and after the Moldavian SSR became independent in 1991, the industry almost completely disappeared. History 1897-1939 The beginnings of Moldovan cinema are difficult to trace, owing largely to the divergent cinematic histories of the left- and right-bank regions, a division which continues today. From 1897 to 1927, film production in Moldova was sparse and remains mostly undocumented. After Bessarabia, now part of Moldova’s current territorial boundaries, was absorbed into Romania in 1918, the USSR created the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) on the left bank of the Dniester River in 1924. This newly created Soviet republic included land taken from Ukraine as well as modern-day Transnistria, a breakaway region that remains unrecognized by any UN-member nations. At that time, the USSR attempted to modernize and Sovietize the MASSR, which included cryrillicizing the Romanian language, industrializing the region, and educating many of the MASSR’s film professionals at the Odessa State College of Cinematography in neighboring Ukraine. Most of the films produced by these early Moldovan film professions were documentary works, most of which were propaganda films, such as Protest Rally: Remember Bessarabia (1928), The Bessarabian Agricultural Community (1928), and Five Years of the MASSR (1928). However, the 1928 documentary Everything is Quiet is the most noteworthy film from this period and included an entirely Moldovan film crew. Despite these efforts, the region never had its own national film studio. Throughout the MASSR’s existence, the Moldovan film industry and Ukrainian film industry were almost one and the same: in 1930, the USSR created the Moldovan cinematography department at UkraFilm, which change its title in 1934 and, again, in 1936. Additionally, many film workers involved with these early MASSR productions were Ukrainian. 1939-1952 In the right-bank region, filmmaking in Bessarabia was virtually nonexistent since its cinematic identity was bound up with that of Romania’s, which, due to devastation occasioned by World War I, was progressing at a modest pace. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, which effectively ceded Bessarabia to the USSR, the Soviet army invaded Bessarabia and took control of the region. From 1940 to 1944, Bessarabia experienced its biggest in the field of cinema since 1918. Several Russian-language films were subtitled in the Romanian language, and Soviet filmmakers began producing documentaries and newsreels about the