Roaming around

From the end of July to the beginning of September, we roam the streets of Bucharest to find out straight from its residents what the city is about. A bit against the recent trend of showing it as a gloomy and hopeless place in art cinema made for Cannes, we want to show the city we live in from the perspective of those battling it everyday: those who run it, suffer from it, dirty it, ride it or spit on it.

So here we are, having a public brainstorming in the centre

Then, as we were focusing on Cireșarii Park, a former kids playground open to adults but currently closed off to anyone but the members of the kids club, in a residential neighbourhood in the Northern part of the city, we took some pics

Then started to pin our poster all over the neighbourhod, announcing our out-of-this-world performance on Thursday 18 August on the playground in Cireșarii

Other days, we roamed the Văcărești-Tineretului neighbourhood, one other main focus because of the concentration of very diferent public and popular places in a pretty small area

Back in Cireșari, and following the Congres which we are keeping secret until the release of the film, we caught up with Victor Stutz, local resident and per chance an anthropologist, who took us on a tour of his favorite memory holders. Here we are, right by the entrance to the park, where he got his assed kicked some 20 years ago, going to his rugby class – as the term “sports complex”, splattered over the rugged walls, suggests.

Over the first weekend of September, we joined our mates at PARADAIZ – organizers of events where 90s pop music is reconsidered, away from current elitist evaluations – as they were putting together a party in the hot neighborhood of Ferentari. Meant to bring together us hipsters with locals who are not among the most privileged inhabitants of Bucharest, the event was a general feel-good moment, as one can see in the pic below

Then we had all of September to roam around in the city

We talked to anthropologists who were also childhood mates, bumped into local artists who regularly got into trouble for painting the walls around their studios, and generally walked through many derelict, secret and hot places.

The final days we spent talking to one of Mihnea’s old friends, Vlad Cristea, who shared a passion for a rather underground life

Vlad had so many stories to tell, we knew he would get a large share in the final film.

We wrapped up and started editing sound & image, to that we could screen our film on October 10th.