Film and contemporary art at the Black Sea

Alexander Solomon, among the guests of the third edition of the Eforie Colorat Festival.

Launched at TIFF, the road-movie documentary “Arsenie. The Afterlife”, Alexandru Solomon’s latest film, will be screened in the presence of the author at Eforie Sud before its official premiere, scheduled for this autumn. Running from 3 July to 10 September, the Eforie Colorat festival brings together over 200 events, film screenings, concerts and contemporary art openings. The programme starts every evening at 7pm and admission is free.

An interactive adventure through the varied world of contemporary arts

Developed in partnership with European cultural institutes, diplomatic missions and international film festivals, the Eforie Colorat festival offers daily, during the two months of summer, films, concerts, debates, openings, workshops and greening actions, events designed to erase the barriers between artists and crowds and the boundaries between conventional exhibition spaces and public space. It is the first contemporary art festival on the Black Sea, an event that brings modern and experimental forms of artistic expression into the spotlight. This year’s programme includes contemporary art exhibitions, photography exhibitions, interactive installations, eco-installations, theater performances, film screenings, concerts, artist talks and murals, among many others.

“Eforie Sud is trying something else… Just as we absorbed meshes of slot machines, perfume or jewelry advertisements, I think we can – and even better – absorb some artistic manifestations“, said Robert Orbert, visual artist.

65 film evenings. The Cinemascope Garden in Eforie Sud resumes its mission of showing good films all summer long. Every evening until the end of the season, open-air screenings of the most exciting current productions are scheduled, from Hollywood blockbusters to European films, documentaries, shorts and experimental films. Every Tuesday evening, the CineShort section, developed in partnership with Short Film Breaks, brings the most exciting short films of the moment to audiences. Classic film is shown every Wednesday in the RetroCinema section and documentary film in the Kinedok section. Thursday evenings are reserved for childhood stories, which have even more charm at the Black Sea. The CineKids section will delight families with the most popular animations. Fridays and Saturdays are dedicated to European films, and the CineHit section offers international blockbusters every Sunday.

A highlight of the summer programme is the preview screening of the latest film by director Alexandru Solomon, a documentary road movie following in the footsteps of Arsenie Boca. It’s a kind of pilgrimage staged by a director who takes a skeptical view. The pilgrims and the director re-enact miracles attributed to Father Boca, debate them and confess. Through the eyes of these characters, the film actually captures the way Romanian society is reflected in the legend of Father Arsenie Boca, a story that – say the authors – actually fills the void left by the disillusions of the last 30 years. The screening will take place, in the presence of the team, on 25 August 2023 and will be followed by a Q&A session.

“As the title says, the film is about how Romanian society sees itself through the mirror of Arsenie Boca’s icon, so it is not a portrait or a biography of the man. It’s a film about his afterlife among us. And about how this icon – with its dozens of faces – reflects the aspirations, troubles and frustrations of the people among whom we live. I’m delighted that the film will be shown at Eforie Colorat, in a summer garden by the sea. Because Arsenie’s icon is itself vividly coloured, enigmatic and full of contradictions. It promises all sorts of things; and where else but on holiday, by the sea, are we more likely to dream, but also to reset our lives a little, to get out of the fraught and often irrational routine of everyday existence for the rest of the year?”, said Alexander Solomon, Director and screenwriter.

Workshops organized by the National Museum of Romania. MNAR brings color to the seaside and invites the public to a series of painting workshops.

Contemporary art and concerts. Contemporary art exhibitions will be opened throughout the summer in Eforie, a programme developed in partnership with the E T A J artist run Space Gallery in Bucharest, as well as with partner diplomatic institutions and local cultural centres. Through its satellite – E T A J on Wheels, the E T A J artist-run Space gallery in Bucharest moves, during the summer, to the summer garden in Eforie Sud, where it will host “Inflatable Concrete” – an in situ installation that Mircea Modreanu designed especially for the seaside community. The summer programme also includes several photography exhibitions, from Spanish advertising art to a suite of visual press cartoons about the war in Ukraine. Summer brings performance sessions, artist talks – with personalities of the moment, including Reka Csapo Dup, Darie Dup, Mugur Grosu and Lumi Mihai. Poetry recitals and photography exhibitions round off the cultural offer of the edition, along with evenings of experimental and alternative music. This year’s special guest is Faust Live Band, with Adi Neacsu (bass), Lucas Contreras (guitar), Horia Stanciu (drums), Denis Negulescu (DJ). Faust has played with Subcarpati, Celula de Criza, U.N.D.E, sr71, before imagining a new show formula, a project with jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop and drum and bass influences.

LITORAL MUSEUM. Rehabilitation of the Carmen Sylva Archives. Launched last year, the interdisciplinary project Coastal Archives continues to tell its stories this year. These are stories about beach games from the 1960s and 1970s, “when space was somehow larger, more unrestricted, when you could chase a ball around on the sand on your own without meeting anyone. In the meetings over the year, we talked about the years when the blizzards were raging, when the sea was freezing, about the invasions of foreigners, Germans, Swedes, to whom the children were in a hurry to carry their bags. Stories were told of the merriment in the restaurants and the moonlit dancing nights. Or about the seasonal photographers who, when the season opened, would make their rounds on the seafront, around the terraces, at the casino”. All these, together with old photographs from private collections, will become a digitized archive of the Romanian coastline by the end of this year.

Eforie Colorat for children. In addition to animated films, children are expected at the Cinemascope Garden every day, with playgrounds, ping-pong tables, lego or fussball, among many others. Parents also have a pop-up library with hot titles, ripped from the summer heat, and a merch area with all sorts of surprises.

“The oldest resort on the Romanian coast is betting on culture in the rehabilitation process. We are opening alternative spaces where creative communities meet their audiences and use art and dialogue as ways of questioning society. It’s an attempt to talk about simplicity and nature in an age where technology is changing everything from the role and meaning of the artistic act to the sensitive material with which it operates.”