EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Cristian Buca: Gay is a strong and defining word

Cristian Buca is a young Romanian artist, only 23 years old, creator of a lot of masterpieces, amazing transformations in which the freedom of his spirit is present in every single small piece of it. Cristian plays with an open attitude and a child like curiosity, a child that discovers the world with sensitivity, and from all this play, beautiful things are born.

He is modest, he prefers to stay behind his works, let them talk about his talent. But he is very careful with everything that surrounds him.

All started by playing, passionate and curious, and if at the beginning he described himself as a nail stylist, in time, he became make-up artist, model, and recently, fashion designer.

His latest creation made a lot of controversies in Romanian media, the national costume gown designed and worn by Miss Universe Romania.

So, a free spirit, a bohemian, Cristian Buca accepted to talk exclusively with StiriGay.ro about him, about his career and a bit about his private life. We were attracted to what he worked, we are proud of him as we want to be proud with other Romanian gay values, that are a lot.

At what age did you discovered your passion and what made you develop it into art?

Since I was a little boy I loved colors and strange mixes that I made with them. Later, I discovered lines and shapes so I loved painting. As any child, I was a fan of painting and coloring. My parents, some open minded people, had the initiative and worked hard to develop my artistic skills to the max. At 11, 11 and a half, I started experimenting some new colors, the cosmetic ones that I discovered in my mother's closet. When they saw it was a serious thing, my parents said that it's ok to start a very basic make-up training, something that was fit to my understanding at that age. So, like that, from painting to make-up was just a step.

Queen Elisabeth II honours LGBT Work in C&E Europe

In this 40th birthday year of PRIDE, the LGBT people of Central & Eastern Europe have featured in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2010 with the award of an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) to Clare B Dimyon. This honour is "in recognition of her services to promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Central and Eastern Europe".

Clare attended Bucharest GayFest 2009 and was celebrating her birthday inRomania when this decision was made at the end of April.

Discrimination, a never ending matter

We're talking about discrimination almost all the time. There are funding to fight against it, there are TV and radio shows in which a lot of people talk about it; just talk. It's so present and usual that almost seem to be a natural state. We can exist but we can't be ourselves, we have freedom but we can't express it.

That's how normality looks like in Romania for a gay person that lives it and accepts it. We can say out loud that we are gay. We'll make people feel pity or compassionate, we could awake animal instincts in others or we could awake ourselves all alone.

StiriGay.ro, affected by the financial crisis

Our website, StiriGay.ro was affected by the financial crisis. How could avoid it? Unfortunately it is not enough only to wish to do something for the things to work as planned.

StiriGay.ro is a project that appeared from the desire to move things a bit in theRomanian LGBT community. We started in full speed, bringing a lot of fresh news, mainly from abroad because in our country nothing seemed to happen.