Directed by: Jiří Menzel, Krsto Papić, Adrian Sârbu, Péter Dobai

Documentary – Cehoslovacia, Iugoslavia, România, Ungaria – 1959-1982 – 68 min

Section: SAHIA VINTAGE Connect

Line-up:

“Panel Housing” / “Domy z panelů”, Jiří Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1959, 7 min

“The Hub” / “Čvor”, Krsto Papić, Yugoslavia, 1969, 12 min

“I For One Am Alive and Well..”. / “Aflați despre mine…”, Adrian Sârbu, Romania, 1982, 17 min

“Archaic Torso” / “Archaikus torzó”, Péter Dobai, Hungary, 1971, 32 min

Our long-standing SAHIA VINTAGE program, curated around the archives of the Alexandru Sahia Studio and established over a decade ago, is evolving into SAHIA VINTAGE Connect. This extension of the original project proposes a pan-regional approach to the documentary output of the former Eastern Bloc, exploring the transnational imagination that emerges at the intersection of diverse archives and documentary traditions. We believe that the curation of audiovisual archives has the potential to enrich historical knowledge and inspire meaningful memory work at both an individual and societal level.

We began this journey with the Shadows of History program, screened throughout 2025–2026 in unconventional spaces across Romania and KineDok partner countries (Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia). We continue with this program which looks at the relationship between homes and bodies in four different forms: from the home as a more or less secure physical and psychological space, to the body-as-home and zone of contention, raising questions about power and resistance within stifling political circumstances.

The program opens with an early cinematic tribute by then-student Jiří Menzel to the new model of dwelling introduced in socialist Czechoslovakia: the prefabricated panel building. Two decades later, we follow the private lives of the youthful dwellers of one such panel block – a single workers' hostel on the outskirts of Bucharest. Elsewhere, the modern architecture of a railway hub, serving as a temporary refuge for Yugoslavia’s unemployed, raises questions about what is acceptable, or advisable, to include in a documentary film. Finally, the body as an ethical and aesthetic ideal for a bodybuilder attempting to escape the conditioning of his time encapsulates his yearning for freedom and self-determination, but also the loneliness flickering on the fringes of Hungary’s “Goulash Communism”.

SAHIA VINTAGE Connect is curated by Adina Brădeanu.