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Free time in socialist Bucharest – Archive Movies

How and where did the people of Bucharest live during the socialist period? What did their jobs look like? And where did they have fun and relax? Through the 27 archive films contained in the three thematic blocks of the program, we aim to explore as many facets as possible of possible answers to these questions.

Free time in socialist Bucharest is a program that includes 9 films that touch on the subject of living and coexistence in the capital’s neighborhoods from socialist times. The program has a total duration of 94 minutes and will be screened as part of UrbanEye’s 10th edition: Where to?, on Sunday November 12, from 21:00, at Cinema Elvire Popesco.

The program includes documentaries, commercials and utility films made between 1959 and 1986, most of them being produced by the “Alexandru Sahia” Studio, the institution most active in making such cinematographic projects in socialist Romania. Their themes are extremely varied and capture many issues relevant to the urban concerns of their era: from the construction project of the capital’s subway lines, to the modernization and development of the city’s sewage system, to the construction plans of blocks of flats and up to the translation of entire buildings through a unique technical procedure.


  1. The Gardens of Labor (1977, David Reu)

10 minutes

A film about the Pantelimon district in which various workers who work and live in this area express their admiration for their construction counterparts responsible for the design and construction of modern parks, blocks and factories, “Labour Gardens” does not miss the opportunity to draw comparisons between present and past, including archival images of the appearance of the neighborhood before the socialist reconstruction. The finale is dedicated to the nature offered in abundance to the residents of the parks and streets of Pantelimon, the chorus of a song performed by Mihai Constantinescu accompanying bucolic images of sunrises and sunsets, with various intensely colored flowers and people playing among the trees, sitting at the beach or diving in the waters of the blue lake.


  1. New technique, cultured people (1963, Alexandru Sârbu)

16 minutes

The ease with which the filmmakers combine moments of true musicality, with various workers performing songs full of patriotic and proletultist momentum, with bossa nova, jazz or folklore-inspired sounds, accompanies an equally complex mix of individual stories and collectives of those in the factory. The exemplary cases presented are, in turn, accompanied by summaries of the factory’s products and their technical characteristics, as well as the ways of spending the free time of the workers – from evening university courses, to dance, theater or reading evenings of books borrowed from the factory library.


  1. Cineclubists in the mountains in winter (cineclub material 1964-1966 edited by Roxana and Ana Szel)

4 minutes

Taking over the Soviet model, the first amateur cinema clubs in Romania appeared in 1957, in Timișoara and Bucharest, and were organized within the Student Culture Houses and the Trade Union Culture Houses near factories and plants. By 1989 these cineclubs operated across the country and produced fiction, documentaries, animation and experimental films on 35, 16 and 8mm film and, starting in the 1980s, on VHS.

The raw material from which the few fragments presented here are extracted was filmed on 16 mm support, without sound, by the members of the Studfilm cineclub from Bucharest, during the period 1964-1966, on the occasion of the winter camp organized for students. The filmed images capture synthetic, conventional, reportage-type poses, and at the same time have the candid air of vacation home movies.

The material belongs to the National Association of Cineclubs and Non-Professional Filmmakers from Romania, via cineama.ro.


  1. Sunday gardeners (1985, Ion Visu)

10 minutes

A report on an unusual urban activity, “Sunday Gardeners” is dedicated to those people who, in their spare time, have changed the “concrete square” of the apartment building they live in, for a plot of arable land that they care for. Young and old, men and women, as well as children gather after school hours and on weekends at the “Fundeni Vegetable Garden” in sector 2 of the capital, where they grow vegetables and flowers, dig, water, weed, exercise and spend time outdoors.


  1. Bucur-Obor (1980, Stelian Penu)

14 minutes

An advertisement for visiting the Bucur-Obor store, the film presents the various districts of this largest shopping complex in the country at that time, a real “mall” offering everything for everyone – toys, clothes, food, musical instruments, band records Romanian or foreign and even a disco for night visitors. “Bucur-Obor” introduces us to the management of the store, but also to some of the employees, who are said to be made up, styled and dressed according to the latest fashion, to meet the modern standard of the place. One of the most delightful scenes is the one in which various French, Russian or German customers (most likely played by heavily accented Romanian actors) interact with the staff – a further indication of the store’s cosmopolitanism.


  1. Silver Sage (1971, Adrian Ianuli)

11 minutes

The film presents the clean-up actions of the lakes around Bucharest, started in 1968. The construction of the Străulești bridge and the cleaning of the Mogoșoaia lake are also described. Among the other parks captured in 1971, when the documentary was made, are Herăstrău, Cernica, Tei and Pantelimon II, all of which are important leisure spaces for the residents of the various neighborhoods of the capital.


  1. Athenée Palace (Leonard Suciu)

2 minutes

A short promotional clip for the legendary club Athenée Palace, the film is a pop presentation of the night entertainment offered by this space of loss. Scantily clad female dancers, sweaty singers, all manner of bacchanalian attractions seasoned with a psychedelic musical ambience recreate a western atmosphere, where the audience (male and female alike) are relaxed and barely visible in the chiaroscuro of cigarette smoke, and the performers offer themselves to the gaze indiscreet and greedy for exotic experiences.

The film is part of the Active Archive program, which digitizes and makes accessible films from the UNATC archive, https://arhiva.unatc.ro/filme-unatc/.

Disclaimer: The movie contains nudity.


  1. Vacation (1978, Ada Pistiner)

10 minutes

The whistle of the train in the station, the drawings with colored chalk on the asphalt or the megaphone announcing the daily schedule contribute to recalling the atmosphere of the holidays spent on the shores of the Black Sea in the Năvodari camp for generations of school and high school students. Without off-screen commentary, built from small moments that mark the activities arranged in an orderly manner throughout a day, Ada Pistiner’s documentary is an ode to the endless hordes of tanned children who run, play, eat, swim or spend the evening by the campfire.


  1. Antiinterview (1983, Tudor Potra)

17 minutes

A portrait of cartoonist Mihai Stănescu, this student film made in the early 1980s offers a nonconformist representation of an artist who expresses himself casually, both in front of the camera and in his drawings. The construction of the documentary enters into a kind of dialogue with the ironic and tonic spirit of the protagonist’s lines, extracting, from time to time, scenes of an absurd or burlesque comic from the daily life of the city.

The film is part of the Active Archive program, which digitizes and makes accessible films from the UNATC archive, https://arhiva.unatc.ro/filme-unatc/.

Program duration: 94 minutes

Program and curatorial texts by Ana Szel and Andrei Rus.

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Screening:
Saturday, 11 November, Cinema Elvire Popesco
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