I'm embedding in today's post a brief video I did while visiting a small yet very colourful and nice traditional costume and mask exhibition at Bucharest's Muzeul National al Satului Dimitrie Gusti (The Village Museum).
The most interesting things in the video are the masks. Decorated with fabrics, pompoms, beans, straw and animal horns and representing bears and goats and characters from folk mythology - they are usually worn at folk festivals and rituals in areas such as Maramures and Moldavia and for periods such as Christmas and the New Year (so very apt for this period of time).
Masks were supposed to protect people, concealing their identity and keeping malefic spirits at a distance. According to the tradition, the transition from the old year to the new one represented a crucial moment as the threat of evil was bigger when one year died and the next one was just starting.
I found them particularly interesting because they remind me a lot of the Mamuthones and the Issohadores, the traditional masked characters of the Sardinian carnival.
My research trip to Romania was made possible through a journalistic grant from the Institutul Cultural Român (ICR - Romanian Cultural Institute), Bucharest.
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