Saturday, Sept 9, And Sunday, SEPt 10,
FROM 18:00 AT Ion Brezoianu St. 4

* Participation at the guided tour is free of charge. To reserve a spot, please email us at tangajcollective@gmail.com, with the subject BIDFF Guided Tour.

This year’s guided tours from the BIDFF Community section will explore the places in the Bucharest Old Town that marked the development of the alternative music scene and the underground communities in the early 2000s.

The Old Town, Bucharest, 2023. An effervescent urban area where outdoor terraces, pubs, nightclubs and erotic massage parlors coexist in a crowded and standardized space, attracting mainly young corporate clientele and foreign tourists in search of entertainment and Balkan menus. Cover bands, energetic MCs playing over famous pop songs, maybe a lone accordionist on a street corner, provide a slightly recognisable background sound that claims to be mainstream music.

Twenty years ago, the landscape was completely different, the streets full of ditches and rubble, the people and the underground bars they frequented screaming of suburbia and precariousness. Here, events and concerts by very niche bands of hip-hop, metal, electronic music, and anything that didn't get much airplay on the radio, TV, or in the clubs reserved for successful bands, were taking place weekly. In the basement smoke of those days, there was a sense of rebellion, anger, and maladjustment to an emerging consumer society that the artists and fans of those days rejected, to no avail.

We propose a guided tour through the Historical Center, in an imaginary visit of the locations where once there were clubs famous within the underground music scene, such as Expirat, Suburbia, Goblin, Fire. We will also discuss other scenes with a similar vibe, located in different places from Bucharest, as well as the evolution of bands, independent labels and subcultural movements that had their headquarters here.

About Adrian Ionescu (RO)

Adrian Ionescu is a graduate of the Screenwriting-Film Studies section of the UNATC Film Faculty, where he also finished a Master's degree in Screenwriting in June 2023. He has collaborated as a screenwriter and lyricist in various cultural projects, but also as a composer, having a rich background in the world of Romanian underground alternative music. The area he explores is that of immediate reality, of the confusing present at the confluence of the near past and the uncertain future, of stories of the people around him, touching stories, treated in a subtly comic, empathetic key, with sensitive and nostalgic touches.