The Weight of 2 Million Walls: Visual Research on Sustaining Dignity in Aging Alone in Romania

Overview

This presentation and artistic research essay—developed within my doctoral research in Cinema and Media at UNATC "I.L. Caragiale"—serves as a theoretical and visual meta-discourse derived from the creation process of a social ad-film. It contextualizes the hidden reality of abandoned or alone elderly individuals for whom, between their last days of stepping outside and their final day on Earth, an entire other lifetime may pass—an existential span defined by a single, continuous battle: the one for dignity.

Originally delivered at the international SPOTLIGHT Seminar - Staring at People. Interdisciplinarity and ambiguity of playing with the visibility of humans in cities (2024), the work functions as a derivative artistic product that applies the "From Numbness to Narrative" methodology to the data and field-insights gathered during the filmmaking process.

Abstract, Methodology & The AI Visual Gallery

As a direct derivative of the filmmaking process, this work features part of the visual gallery created with Gen AI. Here, the metadata of the original film's creation was further utilized to construct the gallery, seeking to uncover and offer fragments of the truth regarding the plight of Romania's 2 million elderly living alone that could not be fully captured or rendered within the film itself.

By taking the empirical data, field photographs, and heavy emotional realities experienced during production, these elements were structured as metadata inputs and translated into prompts. The resulting imagery acts as a conceptual and psychological extension of the film, translating cage-like urban architectures into a symbolic landscape of dignity in isolation.

This process demonstrates how a filmmaker can operationalize the emotional debris of a real-world shoot to decode and reconstruct or expand complex social narratives through machine-augmented art.

Institutional and Academic Validation

This research was disseminated and peer-reviewed as part of an international academic collaboration:

• Host Institution: National University of Theatre and Film "I.L. Caragiale" (UNATC- CINETic), Bucharest, Romania

• Co-organizers: University of Opole (Poland) & UNATC

• Partners: University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), New Europe College (New Europe Foundation), HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences (Hungary).

• Political & Social Impact: The film was originally premiered at the Romanian Parliament (Senate Health Commission, June 19, 2024) during the event 'Innovation and Quality in Long-Term Care: Perspectives and Practices'.

Project Assets & References

• Associated Social Ad-Film: Watch "Silent Heroes" (Eroii din Umbră)