UrbanEye Film Festival, an event covering themes related to architecture, the city and urban life, will hold a first edition in Cluj-Napoca between May 11 and May 15 at cinema Arta.

So far, the festival has held eight editions in Bucharest.

As an answer to current events, this edition will focus on the destruction of cities and what their reconstruction entails. Through the selected films, the audiences are invited to reflect on the material value of the places destroyed in armed conflicts but mostly on their symbolic, emotional value and on the relationships in the communities inhabiting them.

The festival will also cover themes explored at other editions in Bucharest, including urban development and a focus on works of specific architects and established artists. Besides the documentary film screenings, the program includes special events, talks, guided tours, and workshops for children. 

The event opens with a screening of Where to with History, about the efforts of the German city of Dresden to rebuild the edifices lost during the Second World War. The program also includes The Destruction of Memory, a documentary looking at how the destruction of patrimony leads to a loss of the memory of those places, and Warsaw: A City Divided, telling the story of the construction of the Warsaw ghetto and its legacy.

Another major theme covered is that of living in the films Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On, about a series of architectural and social experiments that change the dynamics of living together; Good Neighbours, a film exploring the fine line between discretion and disinterest between neighbors; and Push, an analysis about the rising apartment prices and the global living crisis it fuels.

Other documentaries in the program are The River and the Wall, a trip along the border wall between the US and Mexico; Making a Mountain, about the construction of a waste-to-energy plant; and Walking on Water, on one of the most impressive projects of artist Christo.

More about the program here. Tickets are available at Eventbook.ro, on the festival’s website, and at Arta cinema.

(Photo: still from The River and the Wall, courtesy of UrbanEye)

simona@romania-insider.com