And a nice little spot we found and people there sold used tires, old tools, rusty cooking machines ? And there I was, with my goods. The passage from art and documentary films to depilatory wax is not an easy one. So I found a method of selling my stuff.

The local fair took place on Saturdays and Sundays. In fact, on Sunday mornings I would go there and meet all sorts of people looking for the things they needed. For instance, one of my first photo cameras was bought there, at the fair. I traded all sorts of things and got more equipment for my studio. I got myself a Smena 8 camera, as I liked black and white films a lot. I used a whole film in black and white on the days of the Revolution. I bought them and developed them myself, I did everything myself. I got another interesting camera from the fair. That?s how my studio started. I sold my depilatory wax on a box left from an old piece of editing equipment, a player. I used to put the box on the ground, take the depilatory wax from inside the box and display it. I bought this Smena 8 camera with the first money I made there. Later I started using more compact cameras, and then modern professional ones. I used to meet former colleagues there but I wasn?t at all ashamed. They had come there for cable and other stuff? For instance, there was a former cameraman there, who boasted that he once had a camera and that he had sold a film he had made during the Revolution, for which some Americans paid 15000 dollars. A small treasure, I used to say to myself back then? At the time I sold a cake of depilatory wax for 2000 lei, if I?m not mistaken. If I managed to sell ten cakes, I got 20 000 lei and I considered myself rich! I had enough money, so I suppose I could have got back home. But it didn?t last for too long, the whole business ended within a year or so. I would also sell honey there. I had a firm of my own, Davy ? The firm had a bank account and a certificate from the city hall ?

There, at the fair, I met guys who, poor devils, sold the little they had left ? If memory serves I got a nice knife there. Sometimes I had to add some money, but I always got what I wanted. This is how I became familiar with the fair because I hadn?t had many previous experiences of that place. But it?s true that it was at the fair that I sold the first Trabant; I had become braver. I sold that car there to get a new one. Later I reluctantly got myself a Dacia.

They had given me a place for my beehives where the Korean Embassy is nowadays, right next door from the Chinese Embassy. And, silly me, I went to see the place: 250 square metres it was ? They were supposed to allot it to me, it was as good as mine, but I was stupid enough to say no. I had to buy that land then ? Now the land in the vicinity of the Chinese Embassy is worth a thousand? What am I saying? It?s more like several thousand euros per square metre. I would have been a little Becali¹ now. We joke about these things, but that?s how it was back then ?

It was a difficult period. I couldn?t get out of Bucharest for an entire week and couldn?t film anything ? And then I would take the beehives and leave the city one way or another. Do you have any idea what a beautiful feeling you have spending time with them? During the day I gathered two or three carrots, one or two onions and some other spring roots, I added some leaves from I don?t know what plants, I boiled all together and got a soup. It tasted absolutely delicious! It was our soup. We had a pavilion where we slept; it was so huge you could park half a lorry underneath it? I was playing the servant. In fact, we used to say that we actually helped each other, that I had no other place to keep my beehives. I let them with him, I took them back and go with them in the fields ? And we spent the night under that half-a-lorry pavilion. I had a tent and a family with me. And we lit up the fire. There were a lot of mosquitoes there, and I suffered like a martyr because of them. I swallowed all over. On the other hand, you had the feeling that you did a nice and profitable job. I gave it up when things with my former trade began to improve.

1 Businessman who is heavily contested by the media.