Cultural Institutes’ Night

Happen last night, on June the 22nd and it felt pretty good. This night only, the cultural embassies in Bucharest stood open all night long and had special shows and programs. There were traditional foods and drinks from the countries represented by each institute. For example, the Spanish Cultural Institute served its guests with sangria, the Polish with bigos, the Czech with beer and so on, while they could enjoy live jazz and blues concerts, short movies, theater plays, dancing shows, art exhibitions and many more.

At first I went to the Spanish Institute, to see an open air projection of the movie Cría Cuervos (1975), directed by Carlos Saura. There were a lot of people so we sat directly on the ground, near some flowers. It felt very good, especially because lately the weather was very hot in Bucharest and we’ve com to appreciate every little green plant and breeze.

About eleven o’clock we left at the Czech Institute where we were supposed to see horror short movies and a horror art exhibition. I was quite disappointed of it, there were only some twisted dolls with all kinds of stuff around them, painted and with their members or hair cut, trying to look scary. I saw three short movies there, and a video clip. I can’t say I liked the movies, but…maybe because I’m not an expert I didn’t understand them. They were just exhibiting a lot of violence, which they tried to criticize in this way, but it was nothing scary, creepy or fun about it (in my opinion of course). We got kind of bored so we started roaming on the streets again, in the, happily, cool night air, watching some bugs running on a building and the stray cats and dogs chasing each other.

We got to the Hungarian Institute where I think they had the best program from what I’ve seen. We arrived there in the middle of a Hungarian blues concert, performed by a band called Rackajam. I simply loved them, but again, I can’t say this is an objective opinion, as I enjoy this kind of music a lot.



And then, about two a.m. we left home, because we were very tired. There was still a lot to see, and I’m still upset for not getting to see the short movies at the Romanian Cultural Institute (Romanian short movies are pretty cool). However, I enjoyed it a lot, and I think it would be a great idea to repeat this experience.

(L.G)