A normal day of filming. Shooting the fictional part of the movie, the dystopic leg of the journey. The set is a former military shooting ground. It was built up in the sixties to train the civilian population into becoming another Vietcong, Transylvania style. The traps are there, the tunnels and bunkers too. There was also a steam train, a mock tank, a canon, a railroad- on which the would be resistance fighters from the Patriotic Guard trained decades ago.
But in the space of a winter the landscape changed. The military unit was disbanded. The lonely sentinel in the command post disappeared. So did the train, the canon, the tank: scrap metal thieves. Anyway the bunkers are still there, right? So, the crew begins to set up the shot. Suddenly, a chariot: the scrap metal collectors. They may be organized, aggressive gangs, or just poor men. The crew gets into contact with them. It turns out they are receptive. They express sympathy for the art of film making and vanish from the shot.
So on with the first takes. But now our newly acquired friends are chopping off a former military building, in the distance. That won't do, since it will spoil the background of the scene. Another intervention, and more reluctantly this time (after all, it's their day's work) they oblige.
Back to our movie business. When suddenly, in the middle of the scene, from behind a mound in come a flock of ship. The set is at the edge of the city, and yet immersed into the bucolic spirit of yonder. Since the post apocalyptic situation in the script cannot be reconciled to this new agricultural reality the decision is taken to break until the heard disappears. It doesn't take long: only one and a half hours.
It was a nerve wracking day, for sure, but remembered in retrospective, a funny one. In an abandoned military depot we found a neat drawing describing in detail the inner working of hand grenades. It is now in a private collection. For reasons unknown, we also found helmets, used tear gas canisters, individual bullet proof vests, that were used in the past by the security forces, while trying to crush the 1989 Revolution. Vipers roamed the ruins. Fortunately, they are shy creatures, and bite only when cornered. The one regret is that a beautiful, colored plate of the AK 47 machine gun was left behind. But hey, you have to loose some, from time to time.
