The Trailblazer

Martichka Bozhilova loves The Great Gatsby, just like so many other female readers. But the difference is that her feelings are reciprocated!

The Gatsby from the screen – Robert Redford – declared his sympathies in 2006, in a video message to the laureates of the International Trailblazers award. The Carlton Hotel in Cannes gathers the crème de la crème of world documentary cinema, and one film maker from each continent presents their colleagues. They are all directors, to the exception of Martichka, chosen to represent Europe. Those on the Old Continent know that creating documentaries is a humble business, and not particularly profitable one, but producing them, at your own risk, in small Bulgaria, requires the selfless spirit of a kamikaze. The guild decided that this young Bulgarian embodies the audacity of the pioneer best, and named her International Trailblazer 2006.

Martichka is a far cry from the common concept of the film producer: invariably male, in this country – with a beard, abroad – with a cigar and other props. Her almost childish gesticulation and natural behaviour do not reveal the visionary of а resolute character who carried the load of creating several works which reminded the world that Bulgarian cinema is alive, after years spent in a standstill and a maze.
Her success story is a quick one (She jumped into the deep end in 2002!), but the prehistory is long and interesting.

Bozhilova gained cultural experience following the red thread of the youths of her generation. It started with Charlie Chaplin’s movies, continued with the exciting Bulgarian cinema of those times, and, naturally, the love for the most European among our directors: Vulo Radev. Later, the red thread led the youngsters to an elite high school where the names of books and movies were exchanged like identification passwords. At some point, our memories converge: the shabby interior of the film archive cinema Druzhba (presently Odeon) and the dusty beam of the projector, streaming Godard, Tarkovsky, and Bergman. The encyclopedic talks of Todor Andreikov. The cinema hall provided shelter for many people in the years of riff-raffing. Over that period, Martichka managed to complete degrees in Law and Theology. For five years, she ran the coffee-bar K.E.V.A in the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, where cameramen and photographers, actors and directors brushed shoulders, waiting for better times. Ferocious times, recalls the producer who saw the birth and death of numerous interesting ideas at those tables. Could that be the source of her resolution to get down to work? Perhaps.

In 2002, Martichka and the director Andrei Paunov had exactly 7 minutes to persuade the fifty or so potential sponsors, at the forum in Amsterdam, of the viability of the project Georgi and the Butterflies – a film about the psychiatrist Doctor Lulchev who turns a home for mentally challenged people into a cosy place where the patients breed snails, ostriches and pheasants... After their presentation, Peter Dale, one of the “ayatollahs” of documentary cinema, stood up and said: “This could turn into either the worst or the best of movies. I will give 10,000.” The others followed suit. The film proves to be a risk worth taking and triumphantly parades the festivals. Then followed The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories (again made by Andrei Paunov and the cameramen Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov) and Corridor 8 by Boris Despotov. Martichka and her adherents from Agitprop realize that they work for a special audience, but this constitutes a part of the beauty of their vocation: to aspire to reach insights at а boundary between documentalism and aestheticism, where talent does not care about genres. They spend months melting the ice of distrust of the cast. They peek into the unknown.

In January, Omelette by Nadezhda Koseva, a part of Project 15, will compete at the Sundance Festival (Redford again!) in Park City, Utah – the world capital of independent cinema. This is a premiere for Bulgaria, says Martichka who leaves me abruptly in the cafeteria. There is no time to lose: five films are already on their way to the viewers.