Giurgiu and Ruse can become a creative force in the future

Alexandru-Grig Vulpe, Tranzit2030

Giurgiu-based anthropologist Alexandru-Grig Vulpe (tranzit2030.eu) spoke to Mihai Mitrică, director of the Animest International Animated Film Festival about the first stop of the Animest film caravan in Giurgiu. From 9-11 June 2023, the public of Giurgiu is expected at the festival with a programme of films, workshops and cinema-concerts, specially designed for the whole family. Admission is free to all activities.

The Bridge of Friendship is a media partner to Animest Giurgiu 2023.

Mihai, please tell us how you remember Giurgiu and the people here during your high school years and what was your path towards the animation, film and creative industries area.

During my high school days, Giurgiu meant for me the space in front of the theatre, where we used to gather to listen to music, mostly audio tapes with metal taken from Rousse in the fair. Giurgiu also meant the schoolyard and Alei Park, more precisely at the Fortress, where we would gather to play football and again to listen to music. It was the time of the smaller double cassette players, which allowed you to take them with you anywhere, using batteries. I also remember the classic conflicts between the fans of Depeche Mode and the rockers.

But they were sensational pioneering years in Giurgiu in every way. Music, film, graffiti. I can’t forget writing band names on blocks with some of my colleagues, which was revolutionary in those days. We’re talking about the period 1990-1993. I also lucked out with some cool generation mates.

Cinema-wise I grew up with the two strongholds, Cinema București and Lumina, where we went to the movies every week. On TV in high school we were the Twin Peaks generation (Long live Lynch!), but also The X-Files (Long live Mulder and Scully!). After high school there was the ASE (Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest) trend, which I also followed, at the Faculty of Management, although there was a lot of competition back then, 9 or something in that place. Not necessarily being attracted to this area, but learning super interesting things, for example different management systems in different countries, I turned to public/cultural management. I entered the film world at the Elvire Popesco cinema of the French Institute in Bucharest, where I helped organize events, and in 2003 I joined the TIFF team – Transylvania International Film Festival in Cluj.

Tell me the Animest story. How did the idea of the festival come about, what were the most important challenges during its evolution and how did it take so long to bring it to Giurgiu?

The idea of the festival came up in 2005, when talking to friends in the creative area of film and illustration, I discovered that there were people making animated films at home. And they have nowhere to show them anymore. Back then in Romania there was TIFF in Cluj and DAKINO festival in Bucharest. Otherwise, the film events that still happened at that time were organised by cultural institutes: the British Council, the French Institute, the Czech Centre.

So, together with another Giurgiu native, who was already active in cultural circles, Laurențiu Brătan, a good friend, we tried to offer this platform to people who were making animation back then. But first we wanted to show that there were other genres of animated films, not only Disney and Pixar, which were seen in cinemas at the time. 

The first edition took place in 2006, when we got our first funding, and the audience response was fantastic. We had three full cinemas for the first edition. The challenges are always related to funding, because the system in Romania doesn’t allow you to get long-term funding, to be able to make a strategy. You have to apply year after year, so you strategise from edition to edition, depending on the competitions you win. 

In Giurgiu we have been trying to organise not necessarily Animest, but a cinema event since 2015, knowing that the city I grew up in doesn’t have a functioning cinema anymore. Now the stars have aligned and, we will have a three-day festival.

This year’s edition will be a pilot one, to see how people react after so long without a cinema in town and the habit of going out to the movies has been lost. I know that Bucharest is close and many prefer the trip to the mall, but I think that in Giurgiu there are, especially among high school students, people who want to see different films. 

So we are trying to get people out of the house and create a constant community in the city for such events.

As you know, we have quite a lot of people from Giurgiu with a background in the creative industries (theatre, film, architecture, design, social sciences), but they have left the city and haven’t had the opportunity to contribute something back yet. In recent years, however, a wave of initiatives has begun to emerge in the civic, cultural and environmental fields. From this perspective, how do you see the city and the Giurgiu-Rousse Euroregion evolving in the medium term, say in 2030? What would you like to see happen?

Yes, that’s right. I think that people have started to realize that Bucharest is suffocated by cultural events, many of them redundant, and I think that in the future artists from different cultural areas will turn to the places where they come from to take innovative projects there. 

The link with Ruse is super attractive, as the city in Bulgaria is probably much more lively in terms of cultural diversity and has a larger population. Collaboration with the artist community or events in Ruse would be fantastic in many ways. In high school, when friends came from cities in the north of the country or from the west, we would tell them that across the Danube is another part of the city and point to Rousse. In fact, Giurgiu was more like a smaller district of Rousse. I am convinced that the two “neighbourhoods” can become a creative force in the near future. They just need these communities to get together and “put countries together”.

By 2030 I would like to see an alternative space in Giurgiu where week after week cultural events as creatively diverse as possible become a regular occurrence, thus boosting the city’s young high school students. To be that “Creative Hub” where they can spend their time in an intelligent way. 

The Animest+ Giurgiu Festival opens on Friday 9 June 2023 with an open-air film screening on the Esplanade of the Tudor Vianu Theatre and continues over the weekend with animation workshops for children at the Nicolae Bălănescu Athenaeum, open-air screenings and an original cine-concert performed by the Sebastian Burneci Trio.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/960069665131294 

Partners: Giurgiu County Council, Giurgiu City Hall, Tudor Vianu Theatre, Tranzit 2030

Media partners: Jurnal Giurgiuvean, Save Cinema Giurgiu, Friendshipbridge.eu

https://www.plus.animest.ro/giurgiu

Photo: Mihai Mitrică (source: Animest Giurgiu)

Subscribe to the channel of the blog “The Bridge of Friendship” in YouTube, where a number of video and audio interviews are published! The blog can also be followed in Facebook and Twitter. Its Telegram channel is here. And here is its Substack account.

About Author