Living 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 molds of the program, we aim to explore as many facets as possible of possible answers to these questions.

Living in socialist Bucharest is a program that includes 8 films that touch on the subject of living and coexistence in the capital’s neighborhoods in socialist times. The program has a total duration of 108 minutes and will be screened as part of UrbanEye’s 10th edition: Where to?, Saturday, November 11, from 20:30, 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.

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1. Our neighborhood (1959, Jean Petrovici)

19 minutes

Produced at the request of the Executive Committee of the People’s Council of the capital, “Our neighborhood” follows the story of a locomotive engineer and his neighbors, newly assigned to the buildings built in Floreasca. Projected against the background of the new neighborhoods under construction, the narrative structure of the film preserves the spirit of socialist realism but is strongly contaminated by the optimism and cosmopolitanism of the 1960s. Accompanied by rhythmic swing chords, we accompany the characters of this documentary, representatives of the working class, both to the places of work as well as in the new apartments, bright and airy, integrated into the logic and aesthetics of the new socialist quarter.

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2. Our house like a flower (1963, Alexandru Boiangiu)

20 minutes

Specific to the seventh decade, the investigative film is a genre that apparently introduces a form of social criticism, by treating some negative phenomena (in this case, the disregard for the norms of shared living and the tenants’ responsibility for the well-being of the apartments in which they live), but which, in essence, aims to draw a series of prescriptions whose violation is criminalized and morally sanctioned at the level of society. Filmed by surprise, in some cases without the consent of those filmed, and even more so, against their interests, the documentary “Our house as a flower” differs stylistically from most of the productions of the “Alexandru Sahia” studio. Ciné-vérité influences are adapted to local reality in an invasive form, where the subject does not participate in the filming willingly or knowingly, and the film crew is invested with an authority equal to that of the state.

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3. Street Songs (1965, Pantelie Tuțuleasa)

13 minutes

“Street songs” is a symphony of Bucharest in the 1960s, describing details of the daily life of the residents of Grivița street and highlighting the major changes brought to the neighborhood during the decades of communism. The tone of the film is light, starting with a song dedicated to the Grant Bridge and continuing, in jazz-inspired rhythms and with visual references to the constructivism of Dziga Vertov’s documentaries, with the presentation of contented residents as tonic as the music that accompanies their steps.

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4. Silence (1963, Alexandru Boiangiu)

10 minutes

“Silence” presents, in the form of a prolonged nightmare of the protagonist, various sources of noise produced by living in a big city like Bucharest. I can capture the playfulness, the comic register and the rather low moralizing level of the film, which works as an allegory of modern urban life, where the only solution is to get a good night’s sleep, despite the screams of neighbors and the noise caused by horns and engines cars, it seems sometimes to pull the duvet over your face (or over your ears) and dive into a parallel dream universe.

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5. On the City Streets (1980, Zoltan Terner)

10 minutes

This investigative film recorded on the streets of Bucharest is part of a series of broader civic education initiatives initiated by local administrations and central bodies. Commissioned by the Public Hygiene and Health Institute in collaboration with the Red Cross, the documentary criticizes the lack of initiative and civic attitude of the city’s residents, who do not consider themselves personally responsible for keeping public spaces clean. A sanitary patrol admonishes negligent passers-by and inspects the streets and vacant lots in the neighborhoods and in the city center—unsanitary places littered with garbage and household waste that, beyond their unsightly appearance, constitute potential foci of infection in urban agglomerations. The end of the film presents an optimistic picture in which the cleanliness of the city is restored with the participation of all residents, from small to large.

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6. Calea Moșilor, past and present (1984, David Reu)

10 minutes

The film reconstructs the history of an important commercial area of the capital, Calea Moșilor, promoting the attempts of the communist authorities to integrate the newly built blocks into its ancient architectural ensemble, which still preserves a series of valuable monuments. On the other hand, the policy of replacing the slums and unsanitary spaces of the past with spacious blocks is also presented, with the microphone sometimes handed to the residents of Calea Moșilor to tell us what they think about the benefits of the architectural plan of the area. The artist Anda Călugăreanu, for example, sings us a gentle song, accompanied by the guitar and her daughter.

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7. Good and bad (1986, Pompiliu Gâlmeanu)

9 minutes

Filmed at the hostels for non-family members in the Pipera area, in sector 2 of the capital, “The Good and the Bad” is both a criticism of the poor living conditions offered to the tenants by the property managers and a moralizing analysis of the behavior of many of the tenants that are not suitable for life in the city. Initially insisting on some counter-examples and directly and sharply drawing the attention of the impure people to the irregularities noticed in their customs or management, the filmmakers conclude their plea by presenting another model home of non-familists, where the cleanliness and good decency of the neighbors replace the disorder and indolence of the former.

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8. Find out about me, that I am well and healthy, and what I wish for you as well… (1982, Adrian Sârbu)

17 minutes

A reference social documentary for the perspective of the generation of eighties filmmakers, the cinematic epistle “Find out about me…” describes aspects of the social landscape of the urban periphery. Filmed in the homes of non-familists, the documentary traces the grassroots effects of labor migration from agriculture to industry and from rural to urban environments. Registered in the registers of the hostel managers, the tenants and tenants of these Comfort III studios on the outskirts of the city confess that in the space lacking privacy, they give individual faces and voices to this phenomenon specific to the socialist period. The documentary has an elaborate soundtrack, which superimposes the informal tone of the recorded interviews over the monotonous backgrounds of everyday life: young people watching the games, the TV series “Dallas”, studying, working out, and dancing at specially organized evenings. Panning from one window to another, the camera discovers the setting and the daily concerns of the young people who live temporarily in the hostel but dream of overcoming this temporary stage and settling down at “their homes”.

Duration of the program: 108 minutes

Program and curatorial texts by Ana Szel and Andrei Rus.