Sofia’s Cinema House hosted an interesting screening. Stanislava Kalcheva presented her new movie, named The Dead Make the Living Open their Eyes. The occasion: 1000 years since the death of Bulgarian Tsar Samuel. The film was shot in the autumn of 2013, mostly on St. Achilles Island. The team followed in the footsteps of the great Bulgarian ruler, starting from the spot where he lost his life on the island, then across the Belasitsa Mountain, where the the Bulgarian army was defeated and thousands of soldiers blinded, across the Gate of Trajan mountain pass, where Samuel defeated Basil II. Thus the team reached Vidin where, according to some sources, Samuel started out as a ruler.

“We were about to mark this historical anniversary in Bulgaria,” Stanislava Kalcheva says. “However, this movie is not just a journey back in time. I was thrilled by the prospect of depicting our young characters – the artists, representating their own time, by guiding them along in Samuel’s footsteps. I hope that the creative energy we invested crosses the boundary of the big screen to reach out to the audience. I hope everyone who watches the movie will ask himself who we are, what we were and where are we heading.”

The director invited seven young artists to participate in the project: Samuel Stoyanov, Ralitsa Katseva, Stefana Mitova, Ana Dobarova and Zlatin Orlov, Dessy and Mladen Vrabchev -  they created the gigantic paper wings on which messages were inscribed in all Balkan languages to illustrate what the film was about. “In my opinion their work set the tone of the whole movie and demonstrated its guiding idea,” Stanislava says.

“I wanted to present my idea in an artistic manner and that was why I opted for characters who are painters. It is fascinating to see frescoes in the style of the period we are depicting appearing from under their painting brushes. They had read up on the historical period, they had scanned miniatures of the Manassius chronicle and illustrations from the book by famous Greek Professor Nikolaos Moutsopoulos. And they became really committed.”

“The movie was made possible thanks to the fact that Stanislava invited me to take part in a National Film Center project she had won,” cameraman Krassimir Andonov says. “We didn’t know each other before that, but quickly found common language. We are still living with that movie. We are now trying to distribute it to a larger audience – it is about to reach cinemas. All viewers so far say it deserves recognition. The subject and the historical locations thrilled them all. We had interesting meetings with local people wherever we would go. And they all agreed there is a bond among all people in the Balkans and that the only thing dividing us is politics.”

Their meeting in Greece with Prof. Nikolaos Moutsopoulos, who discovered the grave of Tsar Samuel, was crucial.

“We met with the professor, who is an extraordinary scholar who loves Bulgaria”, Krassimir Andonov further explains. “Though advanced in years, the moment he starts to talk about Tsar Samuel he is transformed. The professor said some very interesting things about the bones, the way he found them and linked them to historical facts, proving they were Samuel’s. He told us about the basilica he found the bones in.”

The beautiful colors of autumn, the incredible places where such dramatic events took place in the past, events that changed the course of Bulgarian history, and everything else that remains untold can be seen and felt at the cinema, if one decides to watch The Dead Make the Living Open their Eyes.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev