Bucharest ShortsUp : Movies and a picnic in the Botanical Gardens

On Saturday, three of us brought a blanket and ourselves down to the Botanical Gardens in Bucharest for a really cool project: an outdoors picnic with a few shorts showing. It was such good fun and it had a lovely community feel as we all knew we had some common interest by being there.
Word of warning, don't be like my friend and take the writing on the back of your tickets literally, you ARE allowed to bring in food! We had to make do with a bag of chocolate cereals that I (rebelliously) hid in my bag, thinking we'll be checked and the precious food taken away from me...but no!

We got there (aka the entrance through Portocalelor road) and then found a little plot of grass to call ours and proceeded to chat and gossip for about an hour when the shorts started at about 9.30 pm. There were fun little 'game stations' and we tried the giant soap balloon making one...needless to say I will not be going down that particular professional road.

The movies we were shown were from Germany, Holland, France, England and the US and were surprisingly good! I don't have a massive experience with shorts but for some reason find them either very amateur-ish or a bit depressing, but these were in none of the categories mentioned above.
Of the list:

• The Business trip (French, by Sean Ellis - effective fun)
• A curious conjunction of coincidences (Dutch, by Joost Reijmers - super funny)
• Love at first sight (British, by Michael Davies - clever and made us all go 'awww' at the end)
• Watching (British, by Max Meyers - slightly less obvious, but super clever)
• Fear of flying (Irish, by Conor Finnegan - animation)
• Arret demande (French, by Thomas Perrier - every man's worst dream)
• and a few others like 'Paul Ronding is...Paul Rondin' and 'On the edge of destiny'

I especially liked 'A curious conjunction of coincidences' on the clever linking of events and making you realize that no matter the apparent insignificance of an action, the consequences are interlinked with others'. 'A business trip' also stood out because of the simplicity of the plot and the entirely unexpected ending, laughed out loud. 

They have a sequence of showings and I think this might be a yearly thing - it's definitely something I'd recommend and would go to again. The tickets are 20 lei (around £4) if you buy them beforehand - check the website for vending points- and 25 lei (£5) if you buy them at the door. 

Bring friends, a blanket and food for a good time!

WEBSITE HERE - http://shortsup.ro/evenimente/