Bulgaria: a mysterious European Country

Bulgaria, in the balcan peninsula, is a an unknown  Country for most of Europe.
The nation, still too relied to a stereotype of the old Country, part of the communist block, is therefore observed with a certain suspect..
Moreover, the international media spread a negative image of Bulgaria, drawing our attention on matters such as prostitution, drug, illegal immigration. Luckily this vision is slowly changing, also because of the many success the Country has during recent years obtained, both in the economic,  and cultural field.
Foreigners going to Bulgaria for the first time do it for job reasons, or for low-cost trips. They only know little about this Country but find a place to discover once there, and realize that to understand Bulgaria and his people, you should need much more time.
Bulgarian show their wish to change these stereotypes and are joining the UE with a lot of interest. Looking forward to the 1st January 2007 (the day that Bulgaria will enter the UE), we can only ask ourselves: will we be able to welcome them?
 
Sofia is a town full of contradictions, richness, traditions and irreverences that would be impossible to analyse and describe with the due attention in a short article.



The town is nowadays slowly waking up, and modern and new cultural centres can be found next to the main traditional Institutions. One of these is certainly the Soros Center for Arts, which defines as its mission the support of cultural processes that affirm the values of an open society. The mission of the SCA Foundation is to encourage the establishment of new conditions for the development of Bulgarian arts and culture.
Sofia is also rich in theatres, cinemas, art galleries, museums, places for traditional music and others for contemporary art.

To avoid falling into a sort of tourist-guide list, in order to list the many places and personalities of cultural interest relied to Sofia, we chose to observe this town (and Bulgaria) from the eye of  someone who can be somehow representative of the same: the movie director Ivan Nichev.

Film director and script writer Ivan Nichev was born in Kazanluk in 1940. A graduate in film and TV directing from the Lodz Film School in Poland, he has been professor of film/TV directing at the National Academy of Theatre and Fine Arts in Sofia since 1978 and dean of the Academy's Screen Arts Faculty since 2001. A member of the European Film Academy since 1997, his feature films include Memory (1974), Stars in the Hair, Tears in the Eyes (1977), Boomerang (1978), Play for a King (1980), The Lonely People Ball (1981), Ivan and Alexandra (1988), The Funny Adventures of a Bulgarian in Europe (1991), and Love Dreams (1995).

In the movie Nichev’s book of survival the Bulgarian director show his country as one very small but exceptionally humane nation where people live peacefully together, side by side.



Another exceptional film is After the end of the World, which is about an Israeli history professor who returns to the city of his birth in Bulgaria to give a lecture. Instead, he begins a sentimental journey into the past after running into his first love, an Armenian girl whom he thought had immigrated to France.  The two rediscover each other and recall their childhood kisses and pranks in the unique atmosphere of Plovdiv in the 1940s. Plovdiv is one of the oldest cities in the Balkans, where Bulgarians, Armenians, Turks, Jews, Romas and Greeks supposedly lived in harmony in the wake of Ottoman rule and before Stalin’s purges, Communism and WWII ended this idyllic world as they knew it. With warmth and humor, esteemed director Ivan Nichev brings us an enchanting story from the “lost” Balkan world where the local priest, rabbi and mullah played cards and drank together.

A special attention is to be given to the Sofia International Film festival. At its tenth edition, the festival welcomes films all over the world, in its 15 sections (in the last edition the films Gabrielle, by Patrice Chéreau; L’Enfer, by Denis Tanovic; Nothing to hide, by Michael Haneke; Person not wanted, by Krzysztof Zanussi, all films to be strongly recommended).

The above notes intend to be a sort of invitation and stimulation to better understand and discover a town and a Country which probably still preserve an unique ‘personality’ and atmosphere.

For how long?

By Amalia Giordano