THE BLESSED WHO DWELL BY THE GARBAGE DUMP
2011
Video documentary
Documentary outcome of an research project initiated by Farid Fairuz, related to dozens Roma families that the municipality evicted in December 2010 from a semi-central area of the city to the Pata Rât landfill, at the outskirts of the city of Cluj, close to the garbage dump.
On December 2010, 76 families (mostly Roma) on the Coastei Street in Cluj-Napoca – an area with a high economic potential – were translocated to 40 living apartments in 10 modular buildings, set near the Pata Rât landfill. There are two other Roma communities currently living at Pata Rât: one of them, which is called Dallas, is a few meters away from the one that was brought in two years ago, and the other – on Cantonului Street -, is situated near the rail road. The rooms the families on Coastei Street received in Pata Rât have a surface of 13-14 square meters (each single room hosts up to 10 people), they have no hot water, no kitchen and the bathroom is shared by four such rooms. On the land on the Coastei Street, from where these families were displaced, a campus for the Faculty of Theology and some other Church buildings are being built, and they are to be finished in 2014. The municipality in Cluj-Napoca exchanged this lot for a park which was under the ownership of the Romanian Orthodox Church. In May 2011, Mihaela Michailov and Farid Fairuz attended a ceremony of consecration for the building block of the future Theology Campus on Coastei Street, but also the protest of the people who had been evacuated. In October, all the artists involved in this project did a series of interviews with people connected to the Pata Rât situation. These interviews are the starting point for the The blessed who dwell by the garbage dump (Preafericitii de la groapa de gunoi) film and will also serve as working material for future social-artistic projects.
Project team:
Farid Fairuz, Mihaela Michailov, Tania Cucoreanu, Katia Pascariu, Madalina Dan.
The documentary is part of the subRahova-Pata Rât project, initiated by the Solitude Project Cultural Organization, financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund and created in collaboration with the National Dance Center Bucharest, Veioza Arte and Colectiv A Association.