Our friend’s mother found this note in the entrance hall of the block that she lives in in Piata Unirii. The translation is exact from the original:

“Please repair the central heating system and tell us in time when something gets broken ’cause we have been without hot water for three days. It is not normal that in a block from the center of the capital in 2008 to not have hot water for three days or and the lady from the 5th floor should repair the pipes, the lady from apartment 50 is asked to repair once and for all all of the pipes and the drainage pipes in the house ’cause weekly something gets broken in the house and to stop renting the apartment to all the Arabs and all the Jews that come at night with company ladies, this is not a hotel or a block in construction for the pharmacist from the first floor who has been terrorizing us with the noise and the garbage for a year since he has been working on the two apartments, good thing that we have been left without interphone for two weeks because of some primitive neighbours who don’t know how to speak at the interphone and open the block main door to everybody. stop opening the door through the interphone to those with advertising or to strangers, nobody cares that the outside lights don’t work that we are afraid of street dogs or to get in the entrance hall, do we have a block administrator or not or a (owners comitee) president, and we pretend that we are a civilized block with goodwill people and who have good positions.”

I’m sure you can sympathize with the original author of this tolerant, literate, sensible, rational and sensitive plea. It can’t be very nice for them, living in a building site of terror, where foreigners, prostitutes and crazed street dogs can just wander in and out at all hours, stealing water, because the front door is just flapping away on its hinges after having been ripped off by large primitives the night before. With things getting broken on a weekly basis, and the hot water being siphoned off to Israel or Quatar by an international conspiracy of uncaring neighbors, the poor author of this note had no recourse but to type as fast as possible, then dash downstairs in the dark and put it up in the central hallway for everyone to see. So we are duty bound to tell the world: While it may seem that the apartment blocks around Piata Unirii are shining examples of national goodwill, and that they’re stuffed to the brim with dignified people in good positions, which is what everyone thinks, of course - it’s just not true. They’re sink holes of depravity, full of poverty stricken water thieves and accidents. So, tell the world and spread the story, so that someone can come from America and free the noble poet of truth from the building of lies.

Costume designs by Jacques Fonteray (Folies-Bergère style) for Roger Vadim’s “METZENGERSTEIN”, the first film of the trilogy “HISTOIRES EXTRAORDINAIRES”. The main character (Barbarela) was interpreted by Jane Fonda.
The other two films are “WILLIAM WILSON” (directed by Louis Malle) and “TOBY DAMMIT” (directed by Fellini); the scripts are based on novels by Edgar Allan Poe.

How many Chantal Akerman films can one watch in one day? I’ve watched about eight films that she made in the 70′, some of them at double speed (”News from home”, “Jean Dielman…”, “Je tu il elle”, “Hotel Monterey”), since the key word for this director is “loooong shots”.

Here is one scene from “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” - Jeanne peeling potatoes undisturbed for two minutes. That’s how the whole film goes, presenting the daily routine of the main character during two days, but the end is rewarding and you are up for a dark surprise.

“Hotel Monterey” is another collection of nicely composed images shots taken in a dull hotel:

“News from home” presents long shots of life in New York; on these images Chantal Akerman reads the letters she received from her mother while she was studying in the American metropolis. The final shot (running for a few minutes) taken from a boat departing from New York is magnificent.

There is a certain degree of poetic nostalgia that made me enjoy Akerman’s films. They reminded me of Herzog’s “Fata morgana” and “Je tu il elle” makes Van Gus’s “Mala noche” seem like a faded copy.

Ermanno Olmi is the other recently discovered director. I have just received three films by him, of which I manage to watch one, “Il Posto”. Olmi seems the right film maker for those who enjoy the Italian neo-realism style. Domenico Cantoni’s character looks very much like Kafka and in fact he ends up working in an anonimous position in an office, sorting out the letters. Another film that “Il Posto” reminded me of is Otar Iosseliani’s “Il était une fois un merle chanteur”.

Giurgiu is a small town in the south-west of Romania. It’s a border town, cut off from the much larger Bulgarian city of Ruse by the Danube river. You can walk from the center of Giurgiu to the Danube via a straight road that goes to the river and then just stops. Here it is:

This road used to be a vital industrial artery, running from the port to the town, allowing access to naval shipyards, quarries and working facilities near the river. With the fall of Communism in Romania, however, the artery suddenly became much less vital. It was quickly clogged with collapsing naval shipyards, old rusting fences and various other symbols of ex-activities. Recently, however, the road was spruced up with EU money. So now it is much easier to see all the cranes and factories as they rust and collapse into the bright green folliage that has sprung up all around them. The road has become surreal. Almost a work of art. Very similar, in fact, to the post-industrial landscapes of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker” concerns a mysterious ‘zone’ set in a post-industrial landscape, that causes space and time to bend out of kilter. The old Giurgiu road also passes a free-trade ‘zone’ which does much the same thing. In both cases it is possible to go near the zone, but difficult to enter it.

Here’s the naval shipyards viewed from the outside and the inside:

Some scenes from the more verdant area near the town:

A few shots of the wild dogs that roam the area:

Old boats:

Strange conjunctions of living conditions:

As you can see, the ‘zone’ is alive and well, and it’s a nice place for a walk on a sunny Sunday afternoon, especially after a plate full of mici and friptura.

We are big funs of the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest and especially the fairs that they organize for Easter, Christmas and other Christian Orthodox celebrations. The last edition was no exception, as usual, we wished we had more money to spend there.
This is the absolute winner picture, they jumped happily and grouped themselves on the bench with their precious copper vases.

This time we bought four of this traditional Hungarian cakes, called “kurtos”.

Wooden spoons and “copaie” - a pot used for preparing the dough and not only. The hanging tubular pots are used for storing the dairy products:

Traditional musical instruments:


Three nice portraits of women in traditional costumes from different parts of Romania.



And this is me, with my latest aquisition, a wonderfully sewn traditional bag called “traista”.

Photo digital collage by John Goto - In the foreground Malevich’s last will written whilst Berlin in 1927 (covering “death or permanent imprisonment”). On a balcony at the Bauhaus: Freidl Dicker-Brandeis (Bauhaus trained artist who died in Auschwitz), Malevich’s daughter Una, Walter Gropius and Aleksandr Gerasimov (Stalin’s “court painter”).

Following the steps of a favorite artist - Kazimir Malevich, I borrowed a book about Bauhaus from the French Institute. It proved to be a very interesting read - the story of a yet another failed European utopian thinking system induced by industrialisation, a subject so dear to me.

Malevich thought that his artistic and social ideas coincided with those of Bauhaus and had a though time getting permission to visit Germany in order to contact them and possibly get a job within the institution. In the end he met Gropius and Bauhaus published his work, “The Non-objective World”, in which he describes his teaching methods. Through this book, Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus and the De Stijl artists, his ideas influenced the course of art, design, and architecture throughout Europe. I have read in one of his biographies that he was quite disappointed with the fact that his theory didn’t seem to match the Bauhaus ideal, but I coucldn’t find any explanation and I’m still very curious to find out those important subtleties. At the first glance, his artistic concept, based on fundamental geometric forms, is not far from the Bauhaus school, but the sources of influence are indeed different.

Itten, the idealist mazdeist teacher, wearing the Bauhaus uniform that he designed. I couldn’t help thinking of Malevich’s suprematist paintings:

The Bauhaus type of atelier was to be found in other art education institutions in Germany, but there was a beautiful exception - the theater atelier.
(Costumes by Oskar Schlemmer for the “Triadic Ballet”)

Looking at the costumes designed by the Bauhaus students and teachers, I remembered Malevich’s costumes designed for the modernist drama “Victory over the Sun” (music by Mikhail Matiushin, text by the poet Alexei Kruchenykh). Here are some resemblances between the the Bauhaus style and Malevich’s:

Bauhaus - Xanti Schawinsky - Circus, stage project

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Kurt Schmidt - The man in front of his dashboard

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Kurt Schmidt, Friedrich Wilhelm Bogler and Georg Teltscher - “The Mecanic Balet”.

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Dance of forms (Oskar Schlemmer, Werner Siedhoff, Walter Kaminsky).

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Dance of gestures.

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”

Theater students wearing Schlemmer’s masques, exercising with simple accessories (equilibrism) on the Bauhaus stage.

A student wearing a masque and accessories of the Bauhaus dances.

Malevich for “Victory over the Sun”