romanian way of fundraising

at the front door of my bloc, between the refrigerators from the non stop mini market in the entrance and the little newspaper kiosk is permanently standing a man with a small table. he sells batteries, mobile supplies, water pumps, superglue and some other not quite usefull stuff.

the security guy from pizza hut at the nearby corner is mostly talking with the man from the table or he is sitting at the back entrance from the kitchen, smoking in the sun. once i asked him what he is actually guarding, because i found him sitting in the newspaper kiosk together with the seller, when i wanted to buy a paper.
„mai sint hoti la restaurant, acolo lucrez eu, pentru ca sa niemen nu fure ceva.“
i waited for the bus and i thought if i ever saw him anywhere else than on the street and not inside the pizza hut.

with the man from the small table i made a deal six weeks ago. i bought a rotten bicycle on the piata obor and he wanted to fix it for me, so i can use it and it belongs to him when i am going back to hamburg. since two weeks i do not even asked anymore if he makes some progresses at the repairs.

last week, we had a chat about bucuresti. where he lives, what i have seen so far and so on. Then he wanted to know more detailed, what i actually do here. I told him that i am walking around a lot, doing photografs, meeting some people, all because i want to make this movie next year and i am here on something like a research trip.

„cine va cumpar filmul“ he asked immediatly and i recognized, that i´m talking to a businessman.. „nu stiu“ and i didn´t ever thought about that question. „i am student, this will be a final year project, so first of all, it´s a work of my interests and not of a big business“
„how much do you need“, he asked. I´m surprised and definitly not prepared for this. i said, i didn´t thought about this so far and i wanted to know, why he is so interested, if maybe he wants to give me some money.
„no, not me“ he replied, „but i have a neighbor in the bloc, who made some good business after the revolution, you know. he is an honest guy with a lot of money. He just bought a huge VW Touareg offroad car.
first of all i thought, why should anybody with a Touareg, after 15 years of good business still live in a bloc of flats and not in pipera. then i asked, why this guy should give me any money.
„because he is very interested in social and cultural projects and he already sponsored some things in the neighborhood where we live.“
„what kind of business is that“ i wanted to know.
he told me something about import-export and a cargo company, but that he is good guy. for sure. i mentioned that i not really think, that he is going to give me anything.

„but how much do need, come on say something“ he insisted.
i babbled something about accomodation and travelling for 3 or maybe 4 persons, to pay permissions and helping hands. then he cuts me off: „you need rental cars, film footage and to pay the development.“ i just thought again that i´m not prepared for this kind of business negociation, and i replied, „well, we will shoot on video but with all these things, including the rental cars of course, might be something up to 10.000 EUR.
„what, not more?“. he stared at me. i asked myself, where this talk will end or if i should have said i need more.

„ok, to summarize all this“ he said, „that i can tell to my neighbor. you´re the director and the producer, so you decide what appears in the movie“
i still thought about the words director and producer and said then, „Well of course there will be his name and the logo of his company at the credit list.“
„yeah, because this will be good advertising for him, even if you try to sell the movie to romanian television: PRO TV, Antena 1, TVR. And maybe you can put the logo in the beginning also, and you can fade it in for a minute after half an hour, because you need to make offers too.“
somehow he recognized that i didn´t like this idea so much and he just said: „but this are all things you have to negociate with him."


we said good bye after he told me, that he will try to arrange a meeting for me with his neighbor at the pizza hut.
in the lift, i thought about asking the security guy, if he likes to be exceptionally inside the restaurant that day.

1 comment:

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