Bulgarian Cinema (Part II)
Val Todorov
by September, 1993. The paper was presented at the Ohio University Film
Conference, October, 1993.
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Val Todorov
The Bulgarian Cinema - Constants and Variables (Part II)
Place on the Map. The Bulgarian producers and directors' almost
desperate and often tragicomic urge for international recognition deserves
some respect rather than taunt. This urge is not provoked by an inferiority
complex or provincial megalomania; it comes with the scary knowledge
that finding a place on the map of the world cinema is not only a question
of prestige but of survival. The economic situation in the country and the
logic of the free market mechanisms condemn to extinction films and
directors who could not gain international producers, critics, distributors
and moviegoers' interest. Paradoxically, on the other hand, such eventual
international attention would induce the home audiences to attend these
new Bulgarian films, boosting them on a rather skeptical and cynical
national market.
. Historical Context
For it is important to know not only the spatial but also the temporal
coordinates of the subject in order to project its future trajectory, at least a
simplified historical reference system should be provided. Although films
have been produced in Bulgaria since 1915, Rangel Vulchanov's On the
Small Island (Na malkija ostrov, 1958) may be selected as a point of
reference -- the first Bulgarian film that received international recognition.
Green Years. Ronald Holloway labels that first period of astonishing
growth as the "Green years". The Bulgarian film revival was the age of
"poetic realism" and continued until the early 70's, although it reached its
zenith in the middle 60's. The decline of that "new wave" was
predetermined by the chilling after the short "thaw" of the Khrushchev era,
and initiated by putting Binka Zhelyazkova's The Attached Balloon
(Privyrzanijat balon, 1967) and three other films on the shelf.
The last significant film from this period was Todor Dinov and Hristo
Hristov's Iconostasis (Ikonostasyt, 1969). Set in the nineteenth century
during the Bulgarian Renaissance under the Turks, the film follows the
woodcarver Rafe through the same agonies of decision that charged Andrei
Tarkovsky's film biography of a Russian icon painter, Andrei Rublev. "An
allegory on the times, the story itself sketched in broad terms the dilemma
facing the committed film artist, whose projects have to be approved by
bureaucrats committed to the staid formula of socialist realism in the
scenario." The visually strongest moment is "when the discouraged icon-
painter enters the Bachkovo Monastery to receive inspiration from the
frescoes painted on the refectory walls back in 1606," Ronald Holloway
writes, revealing his fascination.
During this first period of the Bulgarian cinema of poetics, the first
generation of directors made their debuts and often their most important
films. Their biographies can be found in the second chapter of Holloway's
book; here, just for the record, is a list of the names of a few, arguably the
most notable ones.
First Generation:
Borislav Sharaliev (1922); Zako Heskia (1922); Vulo Radev (1923);
Binka Zhelyazkova (1923); Hristo Ganev (1924); Nikola Korabov
(1926);
Hristo Hristov (1926); Hristo Piskov (1927); Rangel Vulchanov (1928)
Red years. The second period (1971-1983) can be called the "Red
years" of Bulgarian cinema, a term which is emotionally charged and yet
symbolic enough to be perceived just as a signifier outside of its contextual
definition. Holloway himself uses the term "the Pissarev years", referring to
Pavel Pissarev, who was general director of the Organization of Bulgarian
Cinematography in the 70's -- a typical bias, for this otherwise accurate
author, towards the overestimating of the role of higher socialist
aparatchiks, such as Pavel Pissarev and Lyudmila Zhivkova, in the artistic
developments of Bulgarian cinema. Strangely, it resembles the approach of
royal or party historians who interpreted national history as the personal
history of the monarchs or party leaders whom they were serving.
Unfortunately, this inclination has been literally replicated by other
scholars who did not have opportunity or personal interest for research on
their own.
This period of maturity has two high points. The first one is 1972
when Metodi Andonov completed The Goat Horn (Kozijat rog). The film,
made in the style of ancient tragedy, explores the problem of gender
identity and has brought one third of the whole Bulgarian population into
the theaters. Set in the eighteenth century, it is a story of a girl who, after
her mother's rape and death, is raised as a boy by her father and becomes
a haiduk -- an avenger and defender of the villagers in the mountain.
However, the genuine breakthrough of Bulgarian cinema on the world film
stage occurred in 1977-79: Binka Zhelyazkova's The Swimming Pool
(Basejnyt) won a Gold Medal at the Moscow Film Festival in 1977, Georgi
Djulgerov's Advantage (Avantazh), about a con man and pickpocket
during the age of the Personality Cult, won the Silver Bear for direction at
the Berlin Film Festival in 1978, and Rangel Vulchanov's masterpiece The
Uknown Soldier's Patent Leather Shoes (Lachenite obuvki na neznajnija
voin), "a lyrical poem in an autobiographical vein on a fading peasant
culture and the irretrievable past", opened the London Film Festival in
1979 and then won a Grand Prix at New Delhi.
The last recognition of Bulgarian cinema was at the Venice festival in
1983 with Vesselin Branev's Hotel Central (Hotel central), about an
innocent young girl from the provinces, who is mistakenly arrested, during
a period of political paranoia after the coup d'etat in 1934, and brought to
a hotel to serve as a chambermaid -- to be used and abused as the town
prostitute for all in power. She manages, however, to survive morally and
unmask the corruption of those about her.
After that the Bulgarian cinema had been buried under the dinosaurs'
corpses of several epic mega-spectacles, produced to mark the thirteen-
hundredth anniversary of Bulgaria as a state. One of them, Lyudmil
Staikov's three-part epic extravaganza Khan Asparukh (Han Asparuh) -- a
shortened English version 681 A.D.--The Glory of Khan (1984) was
released by Warner Brothers -- was memorable only because it was the
most expensive film in the national film history with its cast of thousands,
its elaborate costumes and massive scenes, and because it somehow
managed to gather eleven million viewers (!!) in a country with a total
population of nine million. Ironically, this world record in per capita
attendance put an end to the second period of Bulgarian cinema and threw
it into a decade of lingering crisis.
With the same reservations stated above, here is a list of the second
generation of film directors:
Second Generation:
Metodi Andonov (1932); Lyudmil Kirkov (1933); Ivan Terziev (1934);
Ivan Andonov (1934); Lyudmil Staikov (1937); Edward Zahariev
(1938);
Georgi Stoyanov (1939); Mariana Evstatieva (1939); Nikola Rudarov;
Ivan Nichev (1940); Georgi Djulgerov (1943); Ivanka Grubcheva
(1946)
Black Years. Continuing the ritual of color codification, one may
paint the sad mask of the last decade black. "Why the bottom should have
suddenly fallen out of Bulgarian cinema at a time when it had definitely
reached maturity is solely a matter of speculation," writes Ronald
Holloway. Putting aside his somewhat naive speculations, but also refusing
to go into lengthy analyses, let it simply be proposed that the ultimate
reason which led Bulgarian cinema to its slow decadence is the same that
later brought the whole socialist system to collapse in the country, and all
over Eastern Europe, rather than some personal changes in the corridors of
power.
Although "even the better films seemed 'old hat' in comparison to
those produced during the previous decade", this period is important for the
emergence of a third generation of directors. This is the first generation of
film directors who graduated from the Sofia Film and Theater Academy
(VITIS); Nikolai Volev, an internationally recognized documentarist
graduated in London, and Henri Koulev, a controversial animator graduated
in Moscow. Another is Peter Popzlatev, who graduated in Paris. All are
counted here because their major feature works were produced in the 80's.
Third Generation:
Nikolai Volev (1946); Kiran Kolarov (1946); Ivan Pavlov (1947);
Henri Koulev (1949); Evgeni Mihailov; Peter Popzlatev (1953);
Iskra Yossifova (1954); Rumyana Petkova; Lyudmil Todorov (1955);
Krassimir Kroumov (1955); Docho Bodjakov (1956)
Some of the more memorable films of the decade are the debuts or
second works of these young directors: Rumyana Petkova's Coming Down
to Earth (Prizemjavane, 1985) and Iskra Yossifova's Love Therapy
(Ljubovna terapija, 1987) -- two genuine feminist works; Chaim Cohen's
Protect the Small Animals (Zashtitete drebnite zhivotni, 1988); Ivan
Rossenov's Stop for Strangers (Spirka za nepoznati, 1989) -- an entry in
the New School Cinema in Transition Festival in New York 1993; Peter
Popzlatev's I, The Countess (Az, Grafinjata, 1989) -- a chronicle of a
junkie's life that won at least five international awards; Lyudmil Todorov's
Running Dogs (Bjagashti kucheta, 1989) and The Love Summer of a
Schmo (Ljubovnoto ljato na edin ljohman, 1990) -- a charming reunion
film, full of nostalgia and recollections about a missing friend who
committed suicide; Krassimir Kroumov's Exitus (Ekzitus, 1989) and Waste
(Mylchanieto, 1991) -- two somber political and moral allegories which
mark a bright new talent's rise on the Bulgarian film horizon; Docho
Bodjakov's Thou Which Art in Heaven (Ti, kojto si na nebeto; 1990) and
The Well (Kladenecyt, 1991) -- another entry in the New School Cinema
in Transition Festival, and another hot name on the list of the most
significant Bulgarian filmmakers.
These third genaration directors and some of their older colleagues --
Nikolai Volev, Georgi Djulgerov, Ivan Andonov, Rangel Vulchanov -- who
appear to be revitalized by the new challenges the Bulgarian film artist is
facing, are nourishing the hope that the "White years" are almost here.
Periods of Bulgarian cinema:
I. Green years (1958-1970)
II. Red years (1971-1983)
III. Black years (1984-?)
IV. White years ?
. Character and Soul
What are, however, the essential characteristics of the Bulgarian
cinema, which could help it get closer to, or, on the contrary, further away
from the European limelight, after decades of life in the basements and the
sterile studies of a Balkan totalitarianism? What is the "history of the
disease" which has brought the national film industry to its painful
mutations? And can the x-rays of its new body verify the existence of soul
and free will for new life?
Theatricality. Ronald Holloway refers to the Bulgarian Literary
Revival of the past century, trying to explain why "the theatrical narrative
dominates over visual expression for the Bulgarian film artist." It is not
necessary to dig so deep into the past to see that the film industry of the
country was built as a superstructure of a strong theatrical tradition.
Because of the late, in fact repeated, start of the national film production in
the fifties, the first directors, actors and writers came directly from the
theater. The same situation can be seen once again on the academic level
in the second period of the Bulgarian cinema, when the Film School was
founded and attached to the Sofia Academy of Dramatic Art in 1973. The
first graduates of the school made their debuts in the early eighties.
Several other factors contributed to this orientation of Bulgarian
cinema. Three very influential writers -- Angel Wagenstein, Valeri Petrov
and Yordan Radichkov -- put an emphasis on the narrative rather than on
the visual style of the films in that initial period. Finally, the social and
political imperatives of the day determined a greater concern with the text
of the script, which was the explicit bearer of the ideological message.
From the point of view of the ultimate film producer, the State, it was
much easier to comprehend, control and eventually censor the narrative
than to deal with a much more complex and ambiguous cinematic
language. As in the Hollywood studio system during that time, the director
was not an artist, but rather an artisan, while the producer was the
quintessential author of the final product, be it propaganda or mere
entertainment.
Nowadays, in the end of the third major period of Bulgarian cinema, it
is ridiculous to insist that theatricality is one of its dominant distinctions,
though the birth-marks of a pathetic loquacity and some theatrical
structural and temporal peculiarities -- for example, a notably slower pace -
- can still be spotted now and then.
Allegorical Expressionism. Ironically, this second and most
significant attribute of the subject was developed as a reaction to the first
one and the mechanisms which stood behind it. The most talented directors
of the first generation -- Rangel Vulchanov, Binka Zhelyazkova, Hristo
Ganev and Hristo Piskov -- partially influenced by la politique des
auteurs, partially trying to create their own way of expression not easily
susceptible to censorship, defined with their early works a "cinema of
poetics", a poetic realism which was compared with Italian neo-realism,
with the Polish School of Andrzej Wajda and Andrzej Munk, and with the
Hungarian films of Zoltan Fabri. The milestones of that Bulgarian School
were: On the Small Island (1958), We Were Young (1961), Sun and
Shadow (1962), The Peach Thief (1964), The Attached Balloon (1967)
and Iconostasis (1969).
Later on, in the seventies, in the age of political cynicism and
disillusionment, the language of the Bulgarian cinema of poetics
deteriorated from its lyrical stance to much a more allegorical and ironic
one. The philosophic and moral parables, political allegories and bitter
satires proved to be the most durable genre in the last two decades. The
Hare Census (1973), Cricket in the Ear (1976), Cyclops (1976), The
Swimming Pool (1977), Panteley (1978), With Love and Tenderness
(1978), The Roof (1978), Short Sun (1979), Barrier (1979), Illusion
(1980), The Big Night Bathe (1980), White Magic (1982), Last Wishes
(1983), Where Are You Going? (1986), Exitus (1989) and Thou Which
Art in Heaven (1990) are just a few examples of this steady trend, while
some of the most acclaimed works of the seventies -- The Advantage
(1977) and The Unknown Soldier's Patent Leather Shoes (1979) --
were late bloomers of the classical poetic realism from the first period.
Ethnicity. An assiduous explorer of the Bulgarian cultural terrain
should acknowledge, however, that the most important aspect of allegorical
expressionism is its ability to determine not only the past but also the
future of the national film identity. Some critics have made the assumption
that the moral, philosophic and political allegories were just Aesopic tools
for climbing up the totalitarian censorship and, therefore, after its death
they themselves would vanish into thin air; but this assumption is a
projection which is not rooted in the specific cultural realities of the region.
"Indeed, most of Bulgarian cinema only makes sense in juxtaposition
with its vast cultural and national heritage," writes Ronald Holloway. Then
he quotes Vernon Young: "All art is a game played by ethnic rules." The
Bulgarian cinema is no exception. Its allegorical expressionism originates in
the Bulgarian ethno-psychology and folklore, national literature and arts, in
the Eastern Orthodoxy and pagan rites, and in the mythological
Weltansicht, mirrored in a language that employs one and the same word
for story and history.
Some of the negative consequences of the ethnicity, as a significant
characteristic of Bulgarian cinema, were: isolation, nationalism and
provincialism. "The provincial attitudes and values of the overall cultural
atmosphere kept giving renewed support to the convention of schematism
and the mechanism of auto-censorship," wrote Liehm and Liehm two
decades ago. Hopefully, things have since changed for good.
On thematic level this attribute of Bulgarian cinema brought the series
of migration and folkways films from the seventies: A Boy Becomes a
Man (1972), Men without Work (1973), A Tree without Roots (1974),
The Last Summer (1974), Peasant on a Bicycle (1974), Villa Zone
(1975), Strong Water (1975), Matriarchate (1977) and Manly Times
(1977). It gave birth to Georgi Djulgerov's masterpiece Measure for
Measure (1981), but also to a heap of nationalistic historical epics,
produced on a gargantuan scale in the early eighties, which almost
suffocated the Bulgarian cinema, and threw it into its third period of
stagnation and lingering crisis.
As a positive effect of the ethnicity of Bulgarian cinema, one could
expect some kind of fascinating artistic uniqueness with much a broader
appeal that eventually would transform the allegorical expressionism in a
trade-mark of excellence. A role model for such a positive shift may be the
Latin American magic realism.
Cosmopolitanism. "She was both a cosmopolitan and a cultural
nationalist," writes Bruce R. S. Litte about Lyudmila Zhivkova in a rather
dubious context, but the phrase is interesting because in some way it
reflects a dominant force in the Bulgarian culture and cinema respectively
-- the tension between ethnicity and cosmopolitanism.
Bulgaria, as a small country, was always exposed to alien cultural
influences. In the first half of the century it was the French and German
poetry, art and philosophy, then the Russian literature, cinema and
ideology, later on the Italian neo-realism, French New Wave and the East
European Schools, and now the American blockbusters. (The American
share of the theatrical market was estimated at 95 per cent last year). "It
is ironic that theater schedules in Sofia offer a third of the repertoire to
foreign dramatists, in order to acquaint home audiences with O'Neill and
Albee," wrote Ronald Holloway ten years ago, "yet American and English
audiences are quite ignorant of the dramas penned by Nikolai Haitov,
Valeri Petrov, and Yordan Radichkov, for the simple reason that no one has
even bothered to translate them into English."
And the next quotation may well be the most accurate observation in
the whole Ronald Holloway's book: "Bulgaria is often reffered to as 'the
Prussia of the Balkans.' It is a land of culture and traditions. As a country
on the crossroads between Europe and Asia, it tends to absorb and
reflect rather than promote or flaunt its own unique national
character."
Cosmopolitanism emerges as a reaction of the frustrated Bulgarian
artist against isolationism and provincialism. At its worst, it introduces
more or less successful replicas of famous foreign film and genre samples.
At its best, it leads to unique works of more or less universal significance.
This cosmopolitan quest for eternal human values and issues also stems
from the deep roots of allegorical expressionism. Not surprisingly, most of
the films listed above as moral, philosophic or political allegories abound
with elements of well-known universal myths. Ironically, after forty years
floating in the ideological space of socialist myths, the Bulgarian film artist
remains a modern mythmaker rather than a postmodern mythoclast.
Self-reflexivity. It was well known that the significant works in East
Europe were produced by auteurs with distinguished personal style and
vision -- Tarkovsky, Jancso, Zanussi, etc. However, it seemed that the age
of perestroika with its disillusionment, apathy, double moral, distrust in
the official ideology and crisis of faith, which marked the beginning of the
economic, ecological, ethnic and ethical collapse of the socialist system, did
trigger a chain process of disintegration in the high-modernity paradigm of
socialist realism and, on the other hand, of semi-dissident visionary
authorship. In Russia, in the past few years, more and more works of post-
modern sensibility started popping up. Not in Bulgaria, though.
The author's persona remains the most significant factor determining
not only the whole production process, but also the thematic content, form
and style of the new Bulgarian cinema. This auteur figure often tends to
expose the subject of film depiction through self-reflexive projections of his
or her own existential obsessions.
A good example may be Krassimir Kroumov, one of the most
promising directors of the third generation, "a young genius of film
directing who unifies his entirely individual style with the achievements of
the New German cinema of the 60's and 70's," according to the critic
Hans Schurman from "Bonner General - Anzeiger". His last film The
Waste (Mylchanieto, 1991) is about a psychiatrist who recognizes in a
patient's dead body his own father, who he has thought missing since the
communist atrocities of 1949 and who he himself has confined to an
asylum. In the film there is also a Vergilian figure, the Historian, who
serves as author's alter-ego, a commentator implemented in the text that
he is supposed to comment and a false witness who gives false evidence
on what he has seen. "Wittgenstein asserted that the crisis of philosophy is
a crisis of language, and I think that our very existence up to now has
been a fake. In the beginning the Historian talks too much, and then he
utters ever less words until he reaches the final silence where he hears
time. It is a trip back, to the spring of words, to their nakedness and
ultimate freedom," says the director.
Didacticism. In Krassimir Kroumov's works "one can sense the
same spiritual intensity, the same moral ideal and almost religious passion
in the exploration of human suffering as in Tarkovsky's films." But one can
also sense a smack of another crucial and immutable characteristic of
Bulgarian cinema -- messianic didacticism; and the reference to the
Russian director Tarkovsky is not accidental at all. The roots of that
didacticism, which suited the communist ideology and propaganda so well,
are much deeper and can be traced back to the common ground of Eastern
Orthodoxy -- be it Russian, Bulgarian, Greek or Georgian -- and its unique
cultural heritage. For a longer excursion in the Bulgarian past, one can
read the first chapter "Art and History" of Ronald Holloway's "The
Bulgarian Cinema", but for the purpose of this paper it is sufficient to
mention that being an artist in the Eastern Orthodox tradition was
considered similar to being a priest -- a status charged with the greatest
moral responsibilities; the artist was treated as a God's servant rather than
as a traveling comedian, as a preacher rather than as a clown. And a far-
reaching consequence of it is the indisputable assumption that art and
entertainment could never be synonymous.
How to defeat this sacred but obsolete notion as a moral imperative for
creativity? This would eventually be the Bulgarian auteurs' toughest
challenge. It is quite obvious, though, that it should be done in order to
survive, at least physically, in a pervasive reality professing a rather
converse creed.
Randomness. The last essential characteristic of Bulgarian cinema I
would like to state is the extreme difficulty one can face trying to pin
down the essential characteristics of Bulgarian cinema; and it is not a pun
or a joke. "A glance at its development shows a certain degree of
randomness and heterogeneousness," write Liehm and Liehm. This
heterogeneousness and lack of well defined thematic continuity is
determined again by the specific historical and cultural realities of the
Bulgarian film industry.
First, for such a small country, it is a very expensive and
comparatively new art medium, which in its three fruitful decades was in a
position of underdog on the international arena, and even on the home
scene, competing with the traditionally very strong theatrical, literary and
musical forms for its own cultural niche. It appears that the Bulgarian film
artist, so overwhelmed with catching up with foreign vogues and trends,
genre and personal achievements, and with rapidly changing home
cultural, social and ideological needs, has simply not had enough time to
develop his or her own distinguished style, constant thematic pattern or
school of followers.
Second, despite the high professionalism of the Bulgarian film artists,
it is not an industry in terms of Hollywood film production line with its
stiff regulations, staunch hierarchical structure and narrow specialization,
but rather a national cultural institution. The best Bulgarian filmmakers are
rather Renaissance figures with a broad range of cultural interests and
professional abilities, so that significant fluctuations of talents in the film
guild used to be and still are typical.
Here are just few examples, starting from the first generation:
Bulgaria's pre-eminent director Rangel Vulchanov started as an actor,
established the Bulgarian cinema of poetics with his directorial debut,
experimented with various genres from the avant-garde through film noir
to the musical, worked abroad, at one point gave up feature filmmaking to
work on documentaries, then came back and still is one of the most
controversial figures in the field; Valery Petrov, trained as a physician,
recognized as a major national poet, acclaimed as a translator of
Shakespeare into Bulgarian, who gave to the Bulgarian "new wave" the
most important scripts, worked also in the theater, then came back making
distinguished contributions to children's films.
From the second generation: Georgi Djulgerov, one of the most
internationally acclaimed Bulgarian directors, after his magnum opus
Measure for Measure, gave up film production to work in the theater,
then made several documentaries and a musical to return finally to feature
filmmaking in the beginning of the 90's; Russi Chanev who made
Djulgerov's best films possible, both acting and collaborating as a script-
writer; Ivan Andonov, a prolific and very active director, who started his
carrier as a popular film and stage actor, also made notable and prize-
winning animated films in the 60's; Edward Zahariev who was equally
successful in his documentaries and feature films.
From the third generation: Nikolai Volev, a popular national film
director, who is best known abroad because of his documentary
masterpiece House No 8; Henri Koulev, arguably the most talented and
controversial author of animated films and cartoons for adults, who made
several jazz documentaries, contributed with two avant-garde features
Death of the Hare and The Father of the Egg; Radoslav Spassov, who
grew up to his script-writing and directorial debut after two decades as a
cameraman; and Krassimir Kroumov, the most promising new auteur, who
comes in the film industry as a dramatist, novelist and writer with
theoretical accomplishments.
Obscurity. As a Bulgarian I could hope that this notorious
heterogeneousness of Bulgarian cinema is the main reason for the amazing
disinterest and ignorance to the subject in the English language critical
literature and scholarship (though it is really hard to be so naive to really
believe it). Ronald Holloway seems to be the only Bulgarian film scholar
writing in English, who at least knows the subject at first hand, while the
very few other critical attempts are either occasional film reviews or
second hand "accounts, drawn from the limited recent scholarship and
reviews, of this neglected film culture." Bruce R. S. Litte complains that
"Bulgarian films are not available to film students, to say nothing of
average viewers; nor have they become available on video", but he does not
specify whether this is the cause or the effect of this almost total
disinterest to a whole national cinema.
. Coda
The new Bulgarian cinema. What are its characteristics? Does it really
exist? Is it strong enough to survive in the post-communist environment?
Why does it remain one of the few white spots on the map of the East
European cinema?
These were some of the questions that this paper was trying to
answer, focusing on the last five years, but also tracing back the more
durable tendencies in the previous decades. It was an attempt to determine
the variables but also the constants which stand in the complex equation of
contemporary Bulgarian cinema, with a full knowledge, however, of how
little could be done in such a short form dealing with such a broad subject
-- a whole national film industry.
The following are just some of the topics which have not been
mentioned at all because of length limitation: Bulgarian documentaries and
animated cartoons which, ironically, enjoy much greater international
recognition than their heavy-weight feature brothers (Conserve-world was
even nominated for an Oscar), Bulgarian children films, the feminist trend,
the genre movies, the national specifics of acting, cinematography and
montage as essential characteristics of Bulgarian film expressiveness (more
often than not, directing turns out to be the weakest link in many
particular film efforts), the new tendency of film professionals draining into
the TV, the political role of the filmmakers (the third generation director
Evgeni Mihailov with his documentary footage was the prime reason for
the last communist president Peter Mladenov's resignation), the theoretical,
formal and critical presumptions which stand behind Bulgarian film artists'
creative motivation, etc. Unfortunately, even those topics that have been
discussed are pointed out rather than thoroughly analyzed, but it could not
be otherwise. My main concern remains to acknowledge the mere existence
of the subject matter before approaching it phenomenologically.
"My approach to the material is journalistic, rather than academic," writes
Ronald Holloway. This is an approach of an outsider who was on a field
trip to expand his terrain of research. My approach is that of an insider
who is for a while outside of his cultural reality in order to gain a better
perspective on it. If a Western scholar's goal is to understand and explain,
then mine is to reflect and translate. This text derives its mode of
expression directly from its subject, and as a derivative, not surprisingly, it
shares all of the attributes of its argument: self-reflexivity,
heterogeneousness, loquacity, allegorical and didactic expressiveness,
mythological and folklore Weltansicht, uniqueness and of course. The
subject alone determines the syntax in which its tale to be told -- a syntax
that does not distinguish story from history.
(More)