CIRCUMSCRIBED SPACES

The places we live in are drenched in our personalities, one could say. Imperceptibly so, they shape our day to day experiences in the most minute of ways, while we ourselves continuously model them into to new forms.

Limited spaces create microcosms incessantly interacting with one another as organic parts of a larger whole, as both “Anthill” and “1 Building and 40 people dancing” demonstrate. The films observe a garage complex and social housing building, respectively, in order to capture recent history’s aftermath by looking at a small Russian community in Tallinn, or to witness how proximity can act as a driver of empathy and complicity.

These capsules can become fertile ground for the emergence of esoteric communities, such as the IT group in "Techsquat", functioning as a fraternity with a  strict code of conduct.

In face of the uncertainty of success and social ideals of independence and masculinity, in “Techsquat” five young men turn to one another, as they all strive to pursue their dreams.

Self-imposed limitations, this time of a cinematic nature, are also the main motif of “Pallasseum – Invisible City” which transforms the cinema screen into a triptych canvas on which the filmmaker can play freely with the audience’s expectations of spatial and causal continuity.

It is here, in this uncertainty of what is real and what is not that we find ourselves the living embodiment of the places we inhabit, a collage of hidden dreams and obsessions but also a piece of memorabilia of the life lived so far. (Diana Mereoiu)