“Buzludzha”: Spirit of Documentary Screening

For one last time,

Greetings, dear Reader!

I am marking this to be the end of my cinema blog. I could list many tremendous accolades about the experience of working on my first and main multimedia journalism assignment, yet I have already written a summary post. And I dedicate the final one to be a spiritual conclusion to my journey. I could not think of anything to write about better than the historic moment of any aspiring filmmaker – the premier of the first movie.

Since Spring 2012, Documentary Filmmaking class at AUBG has galvanized the strengths and creatives hearts of its students in order to bring a single class-produce movie. The very first one was “Miss AUBG 2012“, then “I, too, am Bulgaria” and finally “Welcome Home” by Fall 2013 class. The new generation of students has decided to continue the tradition and began the production of a new documentary immediately after the Fall break. In the matter of weeks, they have managed to put together a surprising story of two mature Bulgarian men, whose lives are tangled with old, abandoned and vandalized Soviet monument, eternal social ideas that it represented a long time ago. I think this is what concealed behind the documentary’s title “Buzludzha: Memories in the Dust”.

The story revolves around a man, who was repressed by communist government in his youth for no good reason, and another man, who all his life has been serving to the homeland. Both of them explicitly share their attitude towards the communistic times and their views on the meanings of life in general. I am no documentary film critic, but I felt like the narrative unfolded just beautifully throughout the whole feature. However, I have found the ending to be a bit abrupt and quirky as the final part and the final lines were presented in an ordinary manner and the pacing did not imply the conclusion of the story. Still, this is incredible that the students were able to pull off a massive editing project in a such limiting timeframe. And in fact what got me the most excited about the film is the production part. I am amazed that the students have found the key element of their film just on the ride to the place — they were enjoying a candid conversation with a driver, who turned to be a father of one of the students, when they realized that his story was the one they had been seeking for. After the screening, the atmosphere on the stage become remarkably emotional, something extremely rare these days. The father of the student and the main character of the film gave a little speech, praising dedication of the filmmakers to accurately portraying the story of his life in the film. The executive producer of the documentary, Professor Gilbert, congratulated the students on becoming that night true filmmakers and wished them a bright future in the film world.

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http://youtu.be/tpDvrdNGlRA In the end, I would like to say thank you to anyone who visited, commented or criticized this blog. I would not have achieved so much progress without you. Goodbye. And appreciate creative minds behind the camera 😉

P.S. The students have made an awesome production blog about their filmmaking adventures. You can read it over here. One last thing, AUBG Daily also wrote an article about impressions after the screening, take a look.