Egalité

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

The current project involves research and writing (script development) for my sophomore feature film. The film is meant to be a period piece, set in 1835 Romania, during the year in which a utopian social experiment took place - the phalanstery of Scăieni. It tells the story of a woman who was part of the phalanstery (“The agronomical spouses’ colony“). The phalanstery lasted for only a year, between 1835 and 1836. It was the second in the world, after the one in France, at Conde-sur-Vesgres. It was the utopian project of Theodore Diamant, an apprentice of Charles Fourier, who persuaded a Romanian land owner to offer his domain for the colony. The ideological project was extremely progressive for its times, especially in Romania, wanting to create an equal society, in which work was done by everyone and education was offered by and available for all, in which the farmer could teach the doctor and the doctor could teach the artist and the artist could learn from the simple man, a place were women were to be equal to their counterparts. But the Scăieni phalanstery failed as it ended up using the people who joined it. The land owner, who was in extreme debts, benefited from their work without offering them back what they were promised. The people who joined were mostly couples, “spouses” as they were called, but also very young men and women, 16 or 17 of age, and also ex-Roma slaves. The film talks not so much about the failure of a society that was meant to be constructed on the principles of equality and harmony, but mostly wants to explore who were those who in rural Romania back in 1835 felt this cause spoke to them. Who were the ones that joined and why did they do it? The film speaks about values of freedom and equality, topics which we need much more extensive conversations about, given the troubled times we live in.