tranzit.ro/ Bucureşti - CHIŞINĂU - CITY DIFFICULT TO PRONOUNCE
Screening and discussion with Pavel Brăila
Goethe-Institut Bukarest and tranzit.ro/ Bucureşti invite you to the screening of the film:
Chişinău - City Difficult to Pronounce
Followed by a discussion with the artist Pavel Brăila
Friday, 15 November 2013, 6 pm
tranzit.ro/ Bucureşti, Str. Gazelei nr. 44, sector 4
Chişinău, a City Difficult to Pronounce is a film realized by Pavel Brăila in 2011. Inspired by Walter Ruttmann’s 1927 film Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, Brăila’s project is following the life of the city throughout one year, at the end of which he is editing the footage as one day, no narrative, no commentary, just the documentary material with the real sound. The constantly changing appearance of his city as well as the lack in the national archives of the country of any recorded visual material documenting these changes from the past 20 years determined the artist to embark on this memory project, which is at the same time an urban diary and a historical and anthropological filmic essay. More than the formal cinematic experience created by the different rhythms of the city, and in a multi-perspectival shift offered by the triptych presentation, the project constitutes itself in a document which allows the viewer not only to follow the city’s idiosyncrasies but also to become a witness of its irreversible transformation. His project is thus a chronicle of a present rapidly becoming history, with its public as the only – diffuse – keepers of a memory soon to be erased. (Raluca Voinea)
Chişinău - City Difficult to Pronounce, 2011, 57’25”
Camera: Radu Zara, Radu Bălan. Montage: Denis Bartenev
Pavel Brăila is a visual artist and film-maker based in Chişinău, Moldova. He received international acclaim and recognition with his 2002 film Shoes for Europe, presented at documenta11. Projects he realized since then include AlteArte – a TV program on contemporary art aired on the national channel Moldova1, Barons’ Hill – a six-channel video work (2005) showcasing a new and vainglorious Sinti and Roma architecture currently arising in Moldova, Definitively Unfinished (2010), a film awarded at the Oberhausen International Film Festival and, more recently, Talking Letters (2013), a film researching the Romani language. Chişinău, a City Difficult to Pronounce is part of Odyssey MD-2010, an ambitious project aiming at documenting a year of life in Moldova.
This event is part of the series “/ Bucureşti”, a programme through which tranzit.ro/ Bucureşti aims at contributing with artistic perspectives to the current debates on the city of Bucharest, seen in an East-European and global context. Meetings with artists such as Olivia Mihălțianu, Ştefan Rusu, Valentina Vetturi and others are to follow.
For more information you can write to: raluca.voinea@tranzit.org or Oana.Lapadatu@bukarest.goethe.org.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/ro/buk/
http://ro.tranzit.org/
ERSTE Foundation is the main partner of tranzit.ro.
