During the same year I made ?Nepotul str?zii? (The Grandson of the Street). He was the first grandson of the street because he was the child of two street children who lived in the area near Gara de Nord (North Central Station), among the pipelines and in the underground of the same station. I put a lot of love in this film about these unfortunate children and I took the footage of the street baby at a time when I was still hoping that more efforts could be made to help them. To this day I live with the regret that so little was actually achieved. In time and on different occasions, I also contributed to a certain relief of their situation, at least in the case of those living around Gara de Nord. I made friends with the general manager of CFR (Romanian Railway Service), as well as with the ministers, but my powers as a film director were rather limited. Most of my colleagues from ?Sahia? Studio took to jobs where all they had to do was to warm up a chair and destroy the field of documentary films in order to get a salary ? But I can?t name a single one that actually kept making documentary films. One female colleague got a high position with the Ministry of Culture: she was in charge of filling the bosses? glasses with sparkling mineral water? Another fellow director, turned general manager, became a businessman in God-knows what television department ? The script writer I worked with for my ?Probleme personale? (Personal affairs), banned by the Second Cabinet2, was elected prefect at Cluj. All these happened during the years 1990 and 1991, after the Revolution. And he asked me to come to Cluj for a film, a monograph on the city. How clever the new prefect is and how splendid his organization methods! ? He continues the methods used by the former chief party-secretary. And I continued the tradition imposed by ?Sahia Film? studio and its own chief party-secretaries ? Before 1989, there used to be a time when people at ?Sahia? Studio would talk about a Romanian school of documentary films. At that time, I used to have teams of 10-15 people who would finish the production of a film in a week. I took a team with me, I was the director, I felt the joy of setting the limits of footage-taking, of decided how they were to be edited, and so on ? But after 1989 I stopped doing all these things, I simply couldn?t do them anymore. But the urge to work is still a human characteristic. What else am I good at apart from making films? I know how too keep bees. Oh, these bees do allow themselves to be exploited ? Beekeeping instantly became my trade in 1992-1993, when I felt that making other films for ?Sahia? Studio was not an option anymore. And I had to have an income, a steady job of some sort ? I started off and, while waiting for another opportunity to make films, I took to the road with my beehives, camping near one false acacia in the field or another one on the hills ? I would take them in sunflower fields and I would then sell the honey. I don?t think that this whole beekeeping business was a sad story, although it actually was. It was bitter story. I had no choice. What was I supposed to do? Later I started developing things and went back to my trade. But at that time nobody needed documentary films. They were all pulling in different directions; they all wanted a television station ? |
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