What remains of our (post) modern life? Is this a story of the everyday people or just a projection of our past to our rotting present? How many lives could a building live? These are just some of the questions that are subliminally posed by Mihai Salajan and Adelina Bulibasa in Libelula, as they unordinary explore the eponymous tower block in Romanian city Arad.

Projected in late 60s by architect Miloș Cristea, Libelula meant to be the block that would encapsulate the Romanian Socialist Dream. Spacious apartments ready to host the working class and a place where everyone can communicate with everyone. Fifty years later the “paradise” doesn’t feel the same. It is not just the buildings that are slowly decaying, it’s the people that are really drifting away. Fragments of the past try to survive and withhold the memories that are already dying while the memorabilia replace the inhabitants. Scattered voices coming from 120 apartments form an urban cruise ship that should depart but stays still.

The directors document an abrupt but intense downfall. Probably it is not nostalgia what drives the viewer to watch this poetic experimenting docudrama, but the inexplicable need to feel connected with a lost romantic world, that might seem extremely appealing even today.

“Libelula” works like a visually impressive video ID of a seemingly ordinary building. Everything is there – building's past and presence, building's lodgers, their treasure and junk, building's hope, shine and misery. A home to working-class people, visually similar to many other buildings, it reveals its essence trough claustrophobic, dynamic frames and details, as well as trough the caretaker's subjective voice-over. Looking at the building from the outside, we couldn't guess much about the lives of the people who live there. It's the insight into their food, habits and the objects they keep that reveals them. Unobtrusive, natural depiction of their environment and routine makes us understand them.

The caretaker is a great observer. He complains how he doesn't have anyone to talk to these days, implying the alienation between the neighbors, which is a paradox, considering the narrowness of their living space. They are all in front of their TV's (tablets, cell phones, PCs). We can feel the consequences of their communist past, but the consequences of the aggressive modern-life isolation as well.

Finally, this Romanian building could talk in the name of many buildings all over Balkan, considering the presence of communism in 20th century. Those buildings function like decaying monuments dedicated to our recent past, stuck between it and the madness of 21st century.

The experimental Libelula by Mihai Salajan is one of the most original films from the entire selection. The title (literally meaning “dragonfly”) is a reference to the name of an ugly communist era housing block, which we get to know from the inside through the background voice of the building’s caretaker and though the associatively stranded episodes that follow his stream of consciousness. By experimenting with vision and narrative, Salajan portrays the fussiness of routine everyday existence through private segments: an investigative journey through the basement; a morning clash with the gasman; the preparation of a pastry following a strict recipe; a lunch at the next-door Chinese restaurant. And objects, so many objects! The apartment of the resident Mr. Matei is turned into a museum of unnecessary household objects, such as old and most likely out of order TV sets, German beer bottles, and other Western accessories, which imply the typical post-communist obsession with material objects that developed as a result of their severe shortages during the regime. The narrative approach relates to the newly-born Romanian film tradition of telling important stories through otherwise unnoticeable details—Libelula succeeds in revealing the discrete secrets of the past and present times though the monotonous and mundane daily rounds.

Mihai Salajan´s passion for experimental cinema is probably rooted in his professional experience as a video editor and colorist. His earlier experimental work Light Leak Experiments could be viewed on his Vimeo profile as well as a teaser of Bodrog, his first full-length experimental movie, which is to be completed soon.

The intense and what seems a bit too hovering voice over contrasts well with the loss of control and submissiveness that the caretaker refers to, when he talks about Libelula. It is a visually engaging film, with a narration which provides the film a particular rhythm and energy, and contributes to an enjoyable narrative tension building up.

There is a relentless energy in Mihai Salajan’s Libelula that interchanges between moments of light and darkness. Focusing on documenting the underlying concepts of existence and being, the film reveals to us a compilation of stills and motion images that call for a metaphysical exploration of life. Accompanied by a haunting soundtrack, Salajan’s portaits of mundanity – an old man arguing with a tradesman, a cat grazing in the grass, a woman enjoying a meal in a Chinese restaurant – these commonplace activities become sinister and nauseating. Libelula accurately documents daily life in the “cement boxes”— apartments that act as visual reminders of the communist past. The narrator merely re-captures these flashes of existence, what is now, juxtaposing them with artifacts of a bygone era, what was… then.

A performative account of the urban transformation and decay, Libelula powerfully portrays life in an apartment in Romania through the lens of a person’s daily life practices and experiences. This so-called performativity works through the central use of male voiceover, which narrates the story of objects and spaces like restaurants or buildings around him. The camera’s focus on the spaces, such as the blocks of the Communist era flats in Romania turns the film into a claustrophobic account of urban life, even if the majority of the film sets in exterior spaces. Although at times the use of the male voiceover is a bit authoritarian, his presence through this voiceover functions as an eye-witness of the transformation of these spaces and objects. For instance, he recycles unused frames and fits landscapes in them or he witnesses the transformation of a Chinese restaurant into a pharmacy. His voice and the tense use of the non-diegetic music are juxtaposed with the images of the objects and spaces all throughout the film, as it is not people but objects that matter. Additionally, as a critique of ‘modern’ life, including our dependence on TV’s and the Internet, the film reminds me of the widely famous sequence of Trainspotting, which goes ‘Choose Life’. Libelula can be summarized as a critique of consumer culture and urban decay.

The attention to detail is what attracted me the most in this short movie, I believe the producers have spent a lot of time trying to bring out the best in every little thing. I also appreciate the story, as I can identify the specific culture of Eastern Europe. The music gives you the chills and it's a great asset for this movie, it goes smoothly with the voice and with the narration.

It only took some seconds for me to enter the movie's world and stay there until the end. Very good narrative and optimized camera work that keep the atmosphere solid throughout. Maybe the museum part went a bit too far but on the whole it is great to watch.

Really interesting and I think the psychology of the character is captured really well along with an atmosphere of decadence.

Excellent!

The film focuses on the horizontal perspective, approaching an internal and external architecture, that of empty frames, desolation, feelings and reactions in block.

The narrative angle is a multilevel one, accumulating inner tensions and banal routine, paying attention to every spot, angle, ingredient, location, urban modification or individual interference with the objects. The last ones are the main character, guiding the message and containing all the historical fingerprints, from an epoch in which the subject did not exist, to a present in which the individual tries to adapt, to stay "on the ship" in stormy waters.