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http://www.empireonline.com/festivalsandseasons/main.asp?FID=347 4th Bulgarian Film Festival
14 September - 27 September
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The 4th Bulgarian Film Festival plays at the Renoir Cinema between 14-18 September before concluding with a gala screening at the Curzon Mayfair on 28 September. Too little Eastern European cinema is accorded a general release in this country. So, this is an unmissable opportunity to see six films that are new to the UK and which reveal how the Bulgarian film industry has responded to the challenges of a post-Communist era, in which state subsidies have been cut and audiences can no longer be guaranteed. |
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Debuting in 1971, Georgi Djulgerov was a subversive director who regularly fell foul of the authorities. And he continues to produce uncompromising pictures like Lady Zee, which tackles the grim realities facing the country's dispossessed youth without resorting to the sensationalism or sentiment that blights so many films about exploited kids. Narrated by Gypsy boy, Pavel Paskalev, the story centres on his obsession with 12 year-old Anelia Garbov, a fellow inmate at a home for abandoned children, whose survival instincts enable her to avoid a gang rape by offering herself to the hostel director. However, it's her sharpshooting skills that afford her the opportunity to build a new life, after alumnus and champion marksman Ivan Barnev takes her to Sofia to work in his private shooting gallery. With Paskalev doggedly following in her wake, Garbov soon learns that the city has its own dangers and she nearly pays dearly for a reckless decision. Leavening the harrowing denouement with a touching resolution, Djulgerov brings out the best in his non-professional newcomers, who manage to convey both street nous and emotional fragility without lapsing into caricature. And Vladimir Georgiev proves every bit as authentic and affecting in Ilian Simeonov's Warden of the Dead. Having grown up in a cemetery, 13 year-old Georgiev has taken upon himself to ensure the burial of the dead, along with struggling artist Samuel Fintzi, who makes up the corpses. A war is raging on the outskirts of the graveyard, but, apart from the bodies that are nightly deposited there by soldiers whose allegiance is never made clear, the pair are more concerned with the fate of Itzhak Fintzi, an old man who has just attended the funeral of the snitch whose testimony resulted in a gulag sentence and whose daughter, Diana Dobreva, becomes increasingly convinced that Fintzi is her real father. The symbolism is occasionally a little ponderous and Simeonov's allegorical references are not always clear, especially when elements of magic realism begin to intrude upon otherwise glumly realistic proceedings. But, thanks to Dimitar Gotchev's photography, the sense of place is well sustained and the performances have a persuasive intensity. Indeed, Diana Dobreva further impresses as a 1980s law student in the central segment of debuting director Milena Andonova's triptych, Monkeys in Winter. Set in Sofia in 1961, the first centres on Bonka Ilieva-Boni, a free-spirited Gypsy with children by three different fathers, who reluctantly accepts the matchmaking help of a Party official after she's forced to flee the bailiffs. However, her new spouse is a disabled chauvinist with designs on her oldest daughter. The second sees Dobreva hoping to become pregnant so that she won't have to return to her provincial home after graduation. But no sooner has she conceived than she becomes convinced that her boyfriend will desert her unless she aborts the baby. But the most powerful segment is a contemporary parable that sees brooding wife Angelina Slavova trying to convince her infertile husband that he's responsible for her miraculous (but actually recklessly adulterous) conception. Ilieva-Boni, Dobreva and Slavova are all magnificent. But Andonova also laces the action with ironic wit, latterly related to a TV documentary about monkeys protecting their young in a blizzard. And winter provides the backdrop for the six vignettes corralled in writer-directors Ivan Cherkelov andVassil Zhivkov's omnibus, Christmas Tree Upside Down. Each story is inspired by an ornament that dangles from a Christmas tree that is seen being felled in the prologue and erected in Sofia in the coda. `The Calf' centres on a hesitant romance that seems to be developing between two residents of a provincial backwater as a cow is being prepared for a communal feast, while `The Angel' follows the misadventures of pregnant waif Slava Doycheva after she begins sleeping rough in Sofia's main station. The fourth installment, `The Sailboat', concerns a gang of Gypsy kids, who steal a mechanical digger and proceed to drive it into the sea, while `The Boar' centres on a farmer contemplating suicide and `The Drum' captures a group of ordinary people dancing in the open air. The most unusual episode is `Christmas Tree Upside Down', in which Georgi Cherkelov plays the part of Socrates as a soldier describes the events that led to the Greek philosopher's enforced suicide. Some may find this blend of anecdote and actuality frustrating, but, for all its directorial flaws, it still captures the essence of the Bulgarian character. Completing the programme are Krasimir Krumov's Night and Day - in which 12 year-old farm boy Kristian Simeonov stands by mother Radena Valkanova after his father goes in search of work and she becomes caught up in a rivalry between holy man Rumen Traykov and visiting dignitary, Nikolay Urumov - and Anri Kulev's breezily optimistic Mrs Dinosaur, in which a mischievous five year-old seeks sanctuary in an imaginary world, while her father struggles to find acting roles and her mother makes ends meet selling cosmetics. David Parkinson For more information: , http://www.curzoncinemas.com Close Window |
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