All For The Movie
A cheery movie update
Hello again from Seattle!
Tomorrow, I’ll be in Las Vegas for a week to attend the American film market where we will be pitching two of our new films to potential movie distributors.
SPOKE
After nearly ten months in post production we completed my latest documentary film SPOKE. You can check out the website here. If you play the social media game, we post there with regular updates. For those of you like me who stay away from social media, I will highlight posts here regularly.
The poster is designed by local artist Mariya Apostolova who was also the production and costume designer on the film.
What’s next?
We have started to submit the film to film festivals around the world.
The trailer is coming out next week. It will be a slow and quiet roll out because social media will be flooded with everything imaginable about the presidential elections here in the US.
AFM (American Film Market). Cross your fingers!
DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES
My trip last month to Bulgaria to attend “The Golden Rose Film Festival” was a joy with unexpected twists and turns. (All the photos are by Christofor Balabanov.)
The audience numbered about 150 people - a hundred more than we expected. It was such an honor to be back to the sea coast town of Varna where just a year ago people showed up in big numbers for “Kaval Park.”
At the press conference the day after, the first question they asked me was who is the father of the director. I dismissed the question and focused on the movie. The director can disclose his entire family tree when he feels, and if he feels, that is relevant. Sadly, it appeared that who is the son of who, and who knows who, is still a metric of success. Or failure.
A little bit later, we were accused of propaganda. If you speak Bulgarian, you can watch the press conference here. We took it all in stride and with good humor. The lead actor on my right in the image bellow did get a bit worked up. Can’t wait for you to see his touching performance.
After the showing, and conversations with the audience and the actors, we decided to do some more fine tuning. By the way, the majority of the audience was visibly moved and many said they cried more than once through the film. I live by the motto: All For The Movie. So I changed my plans from resting on the Black Sea to working on the movie.
The following weekend we locked ourselves in a work studio in Plovdiv. I was joined by the director Nikolay Egermann (Niki) and the lead actor Alexander Kanev (Sasho). We watched the movie three times, had many conversations, and combed through it all scene by scene and beat by beat. Niki and Sasho smoked one cigarette after another; I would get up often to breathe fresh air at the window; and so, hour after hour, three whole days later, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” got even better.
The workspace is big, with high ceilings and weathered textures. The building houses many artists and painters. It is the property of the Bulgarian Zograf Monastery in Mount Athos. And there we were, putting the finishing touches on a film bringing us closer to a meaningful connection to each other. I turned around and took a self portrait - don’t close your eyes.
What’s in store in the near future?
Finishing the soundtrack, sound design and mix.
Finishing color correction.
Final titles - a painter in Bulgaria is actually drawing those. A programmer will be turning them into typed text.
A trailer.
AFM with this film as well. Cross your fingers for this one too.
The film will be shown theatrically in Bulgaria starting in January.
A US and Canada tour around the same time.
We’re also started to submit “Don’t Close Your Eyes” to festivals and are happy to announce it is a finalist in:
You can browse through the website for the film here.
SOME MOVIE RECOMMENDATIONS
GUNDI
This film just became the biggest film release Bulgaria has ever seen. There is a showing in Seattle on the 16th of November here. I will be there with some colleagues.
THE SUBSTANCE
This movie was incredible. I would not categorize it as horror, but as a film where horror grows naturally from the choices each character makes. It is an incredibly timely social commentary on beauty standards. Demi Moor was exceptional. It was written and directed by a French female director which also intrigued me. We stand to learn a lot from women in film. When some of the more gruesome scenes came, I reminded myself this is performance art!
MEGALOPOLIS
Francis For Coppola sold part of his wine business to make and distribute this film. That sort of commitment from a true indie filmmaker is a reason to support the film. I saw the movie three times because I had promised friends and family to watch it together, but our schedules didn’t align.
Here is a YouTube comment that sums up how I felt after the first viewing:
This movie was pure madness. Not good, not bad. It looks very interesting and strange. Definitely a special movie that should be seen on the big screen.
After watching it a second time, I came out in awe realizing that I had allowed preconceived ideas to inform my experience of the movie. I was comparing it to Coppola’s most popular films and to cinema in general. But it fit no form before it. This movie is the artist’s playground and I loved Coppola for inviting us to play.
I watched it for a third time with some films colleagues and two musicians. Yashar said the film reminded him of the impressionistic works of Sergei Parajanov. It turned out that only the two of us had watched Parajanov’s films.
Reflected back on the first viewing, I realized that the naive elements in the story annoyed me then because, sadly, humanity seems to be moving further and further away from reimagining our world as a place of beauty, innocence and wonder.
My favorite Parajanov film:
The other night the family wanted to watch a comedy. Iglika suggested this one:
We laughed all the way to the end…
I send you love and good vibes during election week.
Stay creative!
Bogdan