Private Project

The Block

From neighbourly disputes over garlic-heavy cooking to memories of Ceaușescu’s heatless winters, this film explores the rich social and material universe of a Romanian apartment building. It follows the story of the block’s administrator, in his effort to mediate relationships between neighbours and maintain peace and order. In doing so, it crayons the rich nuances of the inhabitants’ everyday lives. The block comes to life, as its inhabitants constantly reshape it to defy the passing of time, while its failing infrastructure encroaches on their neighbourly relations. This is a film about people’s homes, and the spaces in between. In those spaces, the pipes don’t only carry hot water – they carry meanings from one inhabitant to the next.

  • Maria Șalaru
    Director
  • Maria Șalaru
    Producer
  • Maria Salaru
    Cinematographer
  • Ileana Szasz
    Editor
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 52 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 31, 2016
  • Country of Origin:
    Romania
  • Country of Filming:
    Romania
  • Language:
    Romanian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Ficarq Film&Architecture Festival
    Santander
    Spain
    Best Documentary
  • Architect Africa Film Festival
    Johanesburg
    South Africa
  • Filmul de Piatra
    Piatra-Neamt
  • Docuart Film Festival
    Bucharest
    Romania
  • Future of Cities
    Oxford
    United Kingdom
  • Urban Eye Film Festival
    Bucharest
    Romania
  • Bartlett Film Exchange
    London, United Kingdom
  • Culese din Balkani Film Festival
    Bucharest
    Romania
  • Urban Movies
    Amsterdam
    Netherlands
  • RAI Ethnographic Film Festival
    Bristol
    United Kingdom
  • Ethnografilm
    Paris
    France
  • Public Facades
    Chisinau
    Moldova, Republic of
Director Biography - Maria Șalaru

I am a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford, currently finishing a research project about post-socialist changes in the urban environment in Piatra-Neamț, Romania. I graduated from University College Utrecht in 2011 with a degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences (Anthropology and Philosophy), and I combined my interest in social science research and photography in a Visual Anthropology Master’s degree at the University of Oxford. Having extensive photographic experience in Romania, the Netherlands, Tanzania, and the US, I also pursued visual methods in my own PhD research. I thus filmed The Block, an observational documentary about the block of flats I researched for over one year. This is my first feature film, and the first step in my larger collaborative project aimed at documenting what happens to buildings after they are built.

Add Director Biography