The two-weeks residency in Bucharest, that actually started two months before, brought together six female emerging artists, with different backgrounds (some in film-making, and some in visual art, performative art, and conceptual art). All were coordinated by two facilitators, and received information and feedback from five professionals during four masterclasses. During the residency, they formed two teams of two, while two artists preferred to work on their own. Everybody had a different process and used different techniques to create, in total, 4 video- poems, which were presented in a final event on Monday, 13 th March 2023, at Rezidenta9, in Bucharest, Romania, in front of an audience of more than 60 people, some of which were film professionals. The film projection was followed by a Q&A with the artists and a discussion and projection of an Albanian film about arranged marriages.
In the period October 2022 – February 2023, three researchers, two of which are film-makers, and one film theoretician, made a research about the representation of marriages in Romanian and Balkan Cinema. The result of this research were six video-essays on the following topics: Marriages in Romanian and Balkan Films (2 episodes); A Parallel between the Approach Taken by Spectacle Films vs Films with Authentic Detail – focus on Emir Kusturica; Case Study on Roma Marriages; Social Control in Romantic Love vs Arranged Marriages (2 episodes). The video-essays served as the base for inspiration for the artists, which watched and discussed together with the researchers ( at the beginning of the residency). The video-essays are published online with open-access.
Choosing Rezidenta9 as the main space for the residency, as well as the final event, was important for the prestige of the project, as it is one of the most well-known exhibition spaces in Bucharest. We have offered the artists a safe and comfortable workspace, as well as meals, materials, and laptops for editing. Our residency facilitated an open and free environment for experimentation, giving our artists as much freedom of expression as possible. We also encouraged them to approach the themes from a self-reflexive perspective. Video-poetry responded accurately to our artistic quests, and enabled them to approach a non-fictional, non-linear narrative, characterized by abstraction and free association between images and words.
The final event was a success, as more than 60 people were in the audience. The event also attracted several film professionals and film festival programmers, as we achieved creating a lot of interest in the artistic results, as well as in the theme of the project. The event was made in partnership with a well-known feminist cine-club, F-Sides, so we attracted not only audience which is interested in experimental cinema, but also feminist activists and audience that is interested in gender related topics.