Synopsis of the feature film La Colț. This film is in production. Directed by Jean Christophe and Chloé Salembier. It is based on Chloé Salembier's doctoral research currently entitled An uncertain urbanism: the actors facing transformation in their environment: the stakes of spacial, social and idenity in the neighborhood Rahova-Uranus.
Night falls on Bucharest. In the Rahova-Uranus neighborhood four women are talking on a street corner. They’re wrinkled and are chewing on pipas while spitting out the shells. Despite the late hour of the evening, we hear the yells of children in the distant background. Directly in front of us, the flower market rids itself of its last clients.
They are Cristina, Cami, Mona and Getta. In two days, two months or two years, they’ll have to leave their houses in their neighborhood.
The film will be immersed in following the daily lives of these four neighbors of different generations. Despite being threatened by future evictions, they continue to invent styles of living together where each passing pleasure is savored at just value. What we’re witnessing here is a fine balance between the fighting spirit and an attachment to a community.
In the 5th district of Bucharest, Rahova-Uranus, life is precarious at best. The men are usually far away, or working abroad in order to make ends meet for their families. Even though they travel back as often as possible it is the women that have now taken charge of the life in their neighborhood. It is an acutely strange turn of the tables in a micro-society where the major population is gypsy1" and traditionally patriarchal.
The money eventually harvested by the men usually isn’t enough and come what may the women need to make due with any conceivable lingering endeavors in their environment that may amount to compensate for their husbands’ meager earnings. They get themselves coiled in any which way possible, be it random tasks at the gypsy run flower market such as a deliveries, designing crowned flower displays, and preparing meals for delivery. These odd jobs do not provide cover by any means but the art of resourcefulness allows them to live with a bit of dignity.
Facing precarious conditions, helping each other out has become a dyer necessity. Ever since collectivity is the only means of survival, strong links have been tightly woven together between the inhabitants of the neighborhood. Beyond the predetermined social factors it is also the love between them that this warm community exists and cherishes.
Today a rising menace gathers momentum in an already difficult environment for these women. Since the law 10 of 2001, owners of property that had their possessions confiscated under communism in 1948 have the legal right to reclaim their property. Under the protection of law, all new owners, indirectly or directly are associated with waves of evictions. The neighborhood attracts greed as the power in place wishes to simply erase the locale to edify a multi-lane highway that would connect axes of the city.
1 For the edition of this dossier, the term “gypsy” is utilized the way it is used by the local population of Rahova-Uranus. In the neighborhood “Romanians” and “Gypsies” co-exist. They differentiate themselves through their identities. On the field we can testify that these two populations are all touched by modern transition. The gypsy population in Romania is nearly 20 million.
Being situated between the Casa Poporlului, or the House of the People, the seat of Romanian Parliament, and the Mariott holet, it is true that Rahova-Uranus creates an unwanted stain at the center of the Romanian capital. It is an urban error that strangely resists all but gentrification of the city centers pushing aside the poorest outside the boundaries of the cities. The price of realty has reached new peaks in Rahova-Uranus and it would all but appear that the State now wishes to rectify this error by killing two birds with one stone.
The lawyers have since been professionally organized in a mafia like outfit to find the old property owners of the neighborhood. Properties that our freshly discovered, the lawyers offer the original owners to sell their lots. It is an offer that suddenly appears out of nowhere as much as an offer that most people simply cannot turn away from. They are unconscious of the consequences that their actions can have in a country long forgotten, and at times never known. When the lawyers do not find the “legitimate” owners they never hesitate to be creative, going as far as falsifying land registry documents of newly built buildings.
Nevertheless, if the misery is painfully evident in the neighborhood of Rahova-Uranus, its population is far from showing any sign of resignation. There is an authentically profound pleasure being together. To find one another embodies the essential core of happiness. It is vital for them that have so little, to benefit whole heartily of what little they do have.
At this time, Cristina is about to celebrate the anniversary of the death of her mother, as she gets ready for the pomana 2 . The preparations of this feast are as much part of all the discussions already alive just to find out which is the best way to organize the anniversary. Everyone dips in their superstitions: should we or shouldn’t we offer her chicken knowing that she died before Easter? Shouldn’t we instead make a typical gypsy ritual to also honor the community?
Through this particular custom, this feast is an occasion to gather interest in the very culture of the
people living in Rahova-Uranus. Their culture is thoroughly mixed and we can taste a little bit of each ingredient that completes this cocktail; a zest of gypsy tradition here, a touch of orthodox christianity there all combined with everyones’ own shibboleth. This is the charm and poetry of the people of Rahova- Uranus, that break past any frontiers in amateur driven lust for life.
2 The pomana is a cyclic feast that is prepared at certain times of the year to honor the deceased. This ritual is built on distinct symbolic systems; influenced by indo-oriental, rom and orthodox traditions. They are all perfectly integrated in this custom. Nevertheless it is a feast prepared to honor the deceased that will be later on distributed to different participants such as friends, colleagues, the poor or ...the pope.
La Colț is currently selected for the EURODOC 2012 for the development of ambitious documentary projects comprising a wide variety of narrative styles and production modes. It has a long-term partnership with the MEDIA programme and the European Commission, the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée as well as Procirep.
