My Socialist Home (Iulia Statica and Adrian Catu, 2021) is a documentary that captures the lived experiences and memories of five women who lived in Bucharest’s socialist housing blocks during the communist era in Romania, and who continue to live in these apartments today. The film examines the historical significance and contemporary relevance of two major reforms initiated under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime (1965-1989): one aimed at demographic growth through the control of reproduction, the other focused on unprecedented mass housing construction involving extensive demolitions. Although set in the contemporary postsocialist context, the film reflects on these historical reforms by presenting the everyday lives and stories of its subjects. In doing this, it reveals the contradictions, subtleties, and the gendered nature of life under communism, foregrounding the prismatic role of architecture in the constitution and afterlife of socialism.

Iulia Statica is a Mellon Fellow in Democracy and Landscape at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Institute in Washington, DC and a Lecturer at the School of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Sheffield, UK. She previously held postdoctoral positions at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Cornell University. Her research focuses on the legacies of socialist-built environments in Eastern Europe, particularly mass housing, and the gendered experiences of these spaces. She investigates experiences of domesticity, infrastructure, and feminized migration in the wider context of Cold War and imperial histories, and their influence on contemporary postsocialist practices. She is the author of Urban Phantasmagorias: Domesticity, Production, and the Politics of Modernity in Communist Bucharest.

Time: 2 December, 18:00

Format: Online

Join Zoom Meeting https://iliauni-edu-ge.zoom.us/j/81858419018?pwd=5cb94xRfq6CON5tmnlUovzX6MXa2v8.1

2025