Vignettes #67

All through the 80s, before I opened a cinema of my own, I worked at and helped build up the cinema of the town's film club, which was (and still is) supported by the city administration and located within its museum complex. Since this was a non-commercial institution, we were obliged to screen a quality program with accompanying educational events, usually seminars, lectures, etc.
One of these events was a long weekend seminar on East European cinema, and for this occasion we had guests from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Estonia who were professionally involved in the film and cinema business of their countries. I must add that this was some years before the Iron Curtain fell, so this was an unusual and rather rare contact with the socialist cinema of those times. There were a lot of things going on those four days, and over time I'll be telling the stories.
The socialist system of these countries had no private or commercial economy, all businesses were state owned, and so it was with cinema as well. All people working within the film business were actual employees of the state. 
Our guest from Poland ran the city cinema of Posen, and he brought along his wife and children - and a large collection of Polish movie posters. As mentioned: the state employed real artists to create their own movie posters for new movies (the official international posters were not allowed in the country). Of course, the state expected top quality art from their employees, and there actually were some very good ones in the collection. Our guest only wanted to show them as an exhibition, but very quickly he got requests from the Western participants to purchase them. He hadn't expected that their would be a demand for the art, so at first he gave them as gifts, mostly to us who were organizing the seminar. But the demand grew, and his wife and we told him to put a price on them, the income would be welcome to him. So, on the second day he asked for 5 German Marks (~ 2.50 Euros in today's currency)  per poster. His wife, however, complained that he was giving them away too cheap. On the next day the price went up to 10 Marks, and on the last day it was 15 Marks. All in all he had reached an income of several hundred Marks - that was about as much as he would earn at his job in one year!
I had 2-3 of the posters, but lost them all over the decades. I only can remember that Blue Velvet was one of them - which I really didn't like...