La Buncăr

The Amateur Filmmakers Museum is an independent cultural initiative based in Reșița, Romania, dedicated to researching, preserving and activating industrial heritage and recent collective memory through curatorial projects, exhibitions, guided tours and site-specific interventions. Originally focused on recovering Romania's amateur filmmaking heritage, our practice has gradually expanded to documenting the people, objects and infrastructures that shaped the city's industrial identity. We see heritage not as a static collection of buildings or artefacts, but as a living process of research, conservation and public engagement. Our work explores how overlooked industrial sites can become accessible cultural resources while preserving their authenticity and layered histories. Through projects such as Salonul de Artă și Industrie, Mociur Industrial Collection and La Buncăr, we reconnect communities with places that have long been inaccessible or forgotten, creating new ways of experiencing and interpreting Reșița's industrial past.

La Buncăr (At the Bunker) is a research, cultural activation and heritage interpretation project focused on the former command centre of the UCM Reșița civil defence shelter. Built in 1952, the gallery-type shelter has 756 sqm, one-metre-thick reinforced concrete walls and a capacity of 300 people. It remained operational until around 2010 and still preserves much of its original infrastructure: a filtration and ventilation system, telephone exchange, water supply, boiler, sanitary facilities and emergency generator. The space also contains documents and photographs documenting civil defence drills for fires, floods and landslides. Although an important part of Reșița’s industrial heritage, the centre had never been accessible to the public. Hidden within the UCMR industrial site, which remains under permanent security, it was virtually unknown to most local residents. In 2025, the project was initiated by the Amateur Filmmakers Museum and carried out by Andrei Bălbarău and Ioana Ciolea entirely through voluntary work, with the support of the Municipality of Reșița. The intervention began with cleaning the space and repairing its walls, followed by recovering, documenting and displaying objects found on site, complemented by artefacts from the museum’s collection. Rather than reconstructing the shelter as it appeared in 1952, the project focuses on its final period of operation. Many surviving objects date from the 1990s and early 2000s, leading the project to explore the material culture and memory of Romania’s post-socialist transition through rotary telephones playing audio scenarios, discontinued consumer products and a collection of home-recorded VHS tapes. Opened to the public in September 2025, the space has hosted more than 70 guided tours for school groups, former factory workers, tourists and local residents. Its activation also created a rare opportunity to access part of the UCMR industrial site through guided tours, with the route later expanding to include the UCMR Museum and the historic villas taken over by the Municipality of Reșița. La Buncăr demonstrates how research, minimal intervention and civic initiative can return inaccessible industrial heritage to the community and transform forgotten technical infrastructure into a place of memory and interpretation.