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Trap, Trap of Horseshoes

Trap, Trap of Horseshoes
/5
    • Trap, Trap of Horseshoes
    • Trap, trap de potcoave
  • 1975
  • 16mm film, b&w, no sound
  • 2min, 34sec
"Trap, Trap of Horseshoes" is Ion Grigorescu’s take on city mobility, focusing on urban modes of transportation and the presence of different kinds of vehicles on the street. The title is taken from a line of one of George Bacovia’s poems, written back when horses were still an important element of the city and its wet streets before being succeeded by the noise of buses, shining lights, and the harmonies of honking horns. Out on the streets of 1970s Bucharest, the artist and his film camera observe passing streetcars, food and garbage transports, and Romania’s famous Dacia cars. In between, Grigorescu himself briefly appears in the frame, holding photographs of the same scenes into the camera. Hence, the doubling of moving images with still ones emphasizes the relation to a certain space to which the artist himself has been attached. “Keep the city clean” can be seen as a slogan on one of the passing trucks; other trucks are open in the back, carrying workers from one destination to the next. Individual shots are taken of streetcars as well as from inside streetcars, with close-up footage of people on the sidewalk, of bicycles, and of motorcycles quite generally converging on urban dwellers and their movement about the city. W.S.