A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A FILM DIRECTOR

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A FILM DIRECTOR

Xenia Kisselincheva

“The new millennium might give birth to a new world religion which will save mankind as a whole”

With true friendship time does not seem to count. It may be a platitude, but it happens to you, only once in a while, and you see it as God’s gift. You meet an old friend, you haven’t seen for years but you have the feeling you parted only yesterday. There is the same alchemy in your very special communion, where telepathy and insight helps you tune to the same wavelength with the other person and, then, it is like a jazz improvization you both intensely enjoy. That’s what happened to me when I bumped into Zlatina into the street, after we haven’t been in touch for more than 10 years. We just felt as close to each other, as if we only parted the previous day. I instantly knew I wanted to write about her and she instantly agreed before I had shown her the magazine I contributed to. When we met the next time at my place, she said  she had no problems getting to my house, she “sniffed” her way, as unmistakenly a lost cat finds her way back home. She brought me a scarlet dahlia, she remembered it was the flower I adored. Luckily, I hit on the right kind of white Traminer wine which she loved to sip in the good old days, that is, in the mid-80ies. And, as of old, we did not notice how time passed, how it was well after midnight, and still there were so many things to share and discuss... oh, let me just play this CD of Mike Stern’s before you go!

1986 was an auspicious year for my friend Zlatina Rousseva, the director of several documentary films, branded by the film board as “scandalous”, so they were banned. But, in 1986, she  was awarded a prize at the prestigious festival of Oberhausen, Germany, as well as  at a festival  in Spain. Her film “A Century or a Day”, based on E. Tomova’s book “God Forsaken” was highly acclaimed. This gave her the chance to leave Bulgaria and, like some other colleagues of hers, to try and work under different conditions, unrestrained by political and ideological censorship.

It has not been an easy choice. When Zlatina left the country, together with her husband Ljubo, they had to leave their two-year old son behind. All they had there, beyond the Iron Curtain, was Marion, a good old friend in Brussels. She was helpful and understanding but... she could be that way only for some time. Then, they had to fend for themselves in a totally new and hostile environment, where they were “les emmigres de L’Europe D’Est”. Ljubo had to look for odd jobs on construction sites, though he had just graduated from the Law department in Sofia. Zlatina had to struggle to get any job in the film industry, just to be in her “natural” environment. Her foreign colleagues refused to treat her as one of them, irrespective of the fact that she had already made five or six documentaries, a TV production on Harold Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter”among them. Irrespective of the fact that her latest film “God Forsaken” had won her international recognition, she had to put up with that fate for more than three years, she had to be patient and ... not give up hoping. At the same time, she had to fight to keep her family together in the face of so many adversities. Her infant son David finally joined them, god bless the Red Cross for that, but it took them more than two years to achieve.  They had to change odd jobs, to change accommodation, they had to work long hours, very often ten or twelve hours.  Most of the other Bulgarians, who came to Belgium around the same time, found the strain too much to cope with. Most families fell apart, and very few of them succeeded in sticking to their professional vocation.

After years of waiting and struggling, finally Zlatina’s persistence was rewarded. As she put it, “she broke the ice with her head”! There came an offer from a Belgian colleague to work with him on a film: a documentary film about Hindu funeral rites in Indonesia. For Hindus, the ceremony of cremation is not tinged with the least sadness, it is rather a solemn and ecstatic act. They believe that by burning the body on the pyre, the soul gets rid of its envelope, and it is finally liberated! They are very particular about carefully collecting the ashes afterwards and dispersing them over the waters of the ocean. Air, fire and water, all three elements set the soul free. Now it can roam and wander until it finds another bodily receptacle and ... is reborn. The inhabitants of Bali observe all the funeral rituals to the minutest detail, they take it as a rare chance of paying homage to  the world beyond where the souls’ true abode is, after their transient earthly reincarnations. The topic of the film was very much in tune with Zlatina’s mystical sensibility and it inspired her to display the best of her creativity. The film was a huge success and it was bought by the Solveig. ??? Several offers for commercials followed.  This was the start of a new era for both Zlatina and Ljubo, they were able to set up their own film company and to buy a nice house in central Brussels. The next film was their own production, it was made in collaboration with RTBF, Belgian TV and the Russian Mosfilm. It was a most curious version of the Russian revolution of 1917, as it was reflected in the diary of Zinaida Gyppius. She was known among the intelligentsia as the eccentric lady in white, nicknamed as “the Cassandra of Petersburg”. She kept a diary and faithfully recorded her observations, as the chaotic events unrolled. Through the appearances, she shrewdly saw the ominous historical implications of the Bolshevik coup d’etat. She also presented the attitude of some intellectuals, such as Alexander Blok who chose to identify their utopian dreams with the so called revolution. Zinaida saw it clearly for what it was - a brutal, bloody putsch, depending largely on mass terror and shameless abuse of all human rights. The film was, as Zlatina said, an attempt to show the interrelation between objective necessity and chance in the revolution, as seen through the mental “lens” of an extraordinary personality, Zinaida Gyppius. She pointed out the fact that, even the West was somewhat deceived by the “grandiloquence of the Bolsheviks” which was all “a pack of lies”. The author of “the black notebook” did not spare the intelligentsia either, especially its irresponsible myopic attitude, amounting to the fall of Kerensky’s government. “It was not a revolution, but a civil war ... she writes, ... destruction of moral values, a lapse into barbarity. Great Russia is sinking into a dark bottomless pit.” And at the other pole, she reveals the tragic deception of some of Russia’s best men. “Behind the unpleasant grimaces of the Revolution, you cannot fail to see its magnificence!” Those were the words of Zinaida’s former friend, the tender Alexander Blok, one of Russia’s greatest poets.

Zlatina’s next documentary was dedicated to another great Russian, Vissotsky, the dissident bard whose songs were a kind of forbidden folklore in repressive Soviet times. People of all generations sang them at private gatherings, usually with their fists clenched, as if threatening the authorities. Singing his rebellious songs was dangerous but liberating. They gave a sense of catharsis to a great nation, whose soul was angrily stirring in the chains. Vissotsky is definitely Russia’s martyr and saint. The scenes in the film, shot at his graveside in the Novodevichie??? cemetery make you poignantly aware of this. Zlatina talks to various people, managing to catch them off guard. It is one of the most sacred place for Russians, and there you can get a feel of the peculiar Russian religious fervor, undergoing a mighty revival nowadays. Each flower petal at Vissotsky’s grave stands for the love and adoration of millions Russians and the place is all flowers. It is not quiet there at all, his songs never cease sounding, sung by admirers of his. An never-ending concert in memoriam of Russia’s modern saint.  Vissotsky sang with so much compassion and anger about the darkest side of Soviet Russia, about the prisoners in the labor camps, who were deprived of personal identity, whose suffering was mute and beyond human imagination. The film takes us on a journey to Siberia in the company of three former survivors from “the camps” and we relive their personal drama on this symbolic journey which takes us as far as the Magadan camp, “hell’s ninth circle”. All three survivors strike us as extraordinary personalities, they look as larger-than-life figures who endured the unendurable. And surprisingly, as Zlatina remarks, they remained human. They tell their horror stories with so much humor and self-irony, but they don’t belong to the past. They look forward into the future, they are full of ideas how to make money, they are Russia’s new entrepreneurs. They took advantage of their hard-won knowledge of Siberia and they were quick to succeed. One of them is the owner of a helicopter transport company, the second one is into gold digging, the third one has privatized a plant, putting it back on its feet. This is a film which has the touch of authenticity of a good documentary, but at the same time, it is empathic like a feature film. This film gives you insights which no historical book can give. Ever since, my friend Zlatina has been very busy. At the risk of her life, she shot a few heart-rending films about the civil wars in Africa, about Liberia, Angola, etc.

Of late, since the beginning of this year, she has been making a series of broadcasts for Channel 1 of the Bulgarian TV, implementing a project, financed by the Program for Development to the United Nations. The first serial broadcast, called “Paradise Garden” was dedicated to giving practical advice to the private farm, the private hothouse or garden.  It has already had 13 editions and provoked a lively interest in the audience. The second serial broadcast is called “For You, Consumers” and is intended to raise the awareness of consumers and teach them how to defend their rights in practice. There are various aspects of the broadcast: teaching us how to do shopping and avoid being cheated, how to recognize fake goods, how to deal with bureaucracy in the area of consumer services. The broadcast is shown every other Tuesday at 6 p.m. and has a high rating among spectators, judging by their letters and phone calls. Zlatina is an open-minded person and she likes to hear some intelligent criticism, because she wants to improve each following edition of the broadcast, to make it more relevant to people’s needs. When she gets back from a long working day, she likes to have a sip of Suhindol wine with a friend, or have a long chat with her husband and son in Brussels. Both of them came over for a week in early November. It was a happy family reunion, while enjoying the pleasures which the Velingrad spa had to offer. Sometimes, Zlatina preferred to stay in the hotel room on her own and to listen to the jazz CD’s, her son David recently gave her. Or reread sci-fi books of Lem and Azimov, discovering amazing insights about the information and high-tech age and reminding us of the inevitable dangers and time bombs that go with the sweeping changes and new opportunities. 

Sofia Western News monthly, 1999