"GORIANI"/“MOUNTAINEERS" - Or the self-forgetfulness of the creative ego

MAGAZINE "KINO"

(Issue 6 / 2011)

"goriani"/“mountaineers"

Or the self-forgetfulness of the creative ego

by Iskra Dimitrova, PhD in arts ©

Goriani is an odd word. It was many years ago when I saw it for the first time in a text, if I remember correctly, and asked my colleagues “what does it mean?” They answered me by lifting their shoulders demonstrating ignorance, although they did suspect it might have something to do with bandits around the 9th of September 1944.

27th of September 2011. 22 years have passed since the historical transformation of 1989 and the memories of those past times have faded progressively in public awareness: younger generations don’t know anything about them and, with older generations, nostalgia distorts them. Atanas Kiriakov’s new two part documentary “Goriani” premiers in the Cinema House. The hall is overcrowded. Viewers of all ages are exposed to a huge amount of so far little known facts and information about this impressive phenomenon in Bulgarian history that took place in the mid 20th century. Today, it can be viewed as the first powerful armed resistance – involving great numbers of people and spanning many years (1944-1956) – against the communist regime in Eastern Europe. And it happened before the Hungarian, Czech and Polish resistance and even before the Berlin uprising of 1953… But we are well known for our low self esteem…

We used to live (I did, at least) in the now denounced totalitarian regime and thus had no knowledge of these phenomena. We did not attain that knowledge adequately in over two decades of political transition in either school or universities. You do understand what kind of crime this is – not knowing and not being able to make sense of your country’s most recent history, keeping in mind that such ignorance is a precondition to fatal consequences for the future progress of any society.

Today Europe, too, faces rediscovery of Bulgarian history thanks to Atanas Kiriakov’s “Goriani”. During the filming of the documentary, by initiative of the member of European parliament Andrey Kovachev, around 20 persons involved in the Bulgarian resistance against the communist dictatorship were invited in Brussels to tell their story. Kovachev personally financed 1000 copies of the film to be sent to various schools and universities in Bulgaria, Europe and USA with the idea to help resurrect these important historical truths.

Yes, important! But why? Because tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands Bulgarians from all over country took part in this resistance. The Secret services archives reveal a list of 384,000 “enemies of the state” (who most likely had families, right?), thousands of whom were killed, sent to concentration camps or had to live lives deprived of basic human rights. For the most part they came from the predominantly peasant population of the country at that time. They were Bulgarians deeply connected to the land who instantly felt in their bones that, through foreign influences, from the motherland of Lenin and Stalin, a new and inadequate social system was being forced upon them, a system that destroyed basic values such as private ownership of the land, so essential in this rural country, as well as faith and freedom. So it turns out that this resistance might provide a lot of new arguments needed for the further philosophical understanding of the communist doctrine which was imposed by force and then slowly crumbled away.

Philosophy is not exactly the focus of the film, created by tireless director Atanas Kiriakov who was the first to speak after 1989 about the socialistic work camps in “The Survivors” (1990) and in “The Condemned”. Precisely as a documentary director he deeply understands the great importance that each fact has for any historian, philosopher or artist looking for truth. Especially when his major goal is to expose this truth to the world, make it part of society’s common knowledge, and fight its long term mal-intended manipulation. So in “Goriani” Kiriakov focuses all of his art energy into the resistance testimonies. Or should I say, exclusively into the testimonies: in one manner in the first part of the film and in a different way, in the second.

In the first part of the film Atanas Kiriakov exposes us to countless documents and memories of those few participants in the resistance who are still alive today. He does so impartially, without wandering off the focus of the film, without being tempted to use his well known artistic ability to incorporate his personal point of view (which could always be countered by another, an opposite, or a different one) and without any director’s touches intended to imply what our emotional response should be.

The director of photography Dimitar Mitov’s camera focuses quietly upon the faces of these people while they reminisce, transcending the visual and bringing back what is most important: their normality, their humanity, and their incompatibility with the term “bandit”…

The film offers a string of facts. Frequently identical. Documents. Human faces. Simple words. And seldom panoramic vistas: a kind of aloneness gently pierced by the sound of Teodosii Spasov’s music.

I noticed that a sort of astonishment, a silent question could be felt in the theater. Why does the screen not impose a certain thesis, why doesn’t the director’s vision attack our senses and emotions, why are we, instead, subjected to numerous truly identical testimonies? I thought we came to see a movie? After all, Kiriakov used to impress us precisely with his artistic touch in his documentaries: this is how we remember “Joel’s Flying People” (2007), “The Hell in Heaven” (2007) about the writer and journalist Stefan Gruev, “The Great Love of French “Terrorist” Abel Ramber” (2008) and so many other films he created.

Yes. Here the artistic ego forgets about itself. Intentionally. When society has been deprived of them, facts and truth are more important, more significant and more necessary than any possible or impossible interpretations. In such a case it is more important, more meaningful and more necessary that we as viewers face these facts as they are and assimilate them emotionally and intellectually; it is more important for us to be “forced” to gaze at the faces of the witnesses, to listen without interruption to each and every simple word they utter and ultimately discover that we are not so different from the people on the screen.

This attention to fact rather than to commentary is the extraordinary quality of the film “Goriani”. It is a mandatory compensation for the past lack of knowledge about this significant moment in our recent history. The facts as knowledge, rather than interpretation, will be passed on to the future generations.

Knowing up close Kiriakov’s turbulent emotionality, I must admit that I was surprised by his insight that this is the right way to make this film: hiding himself and his artistic ego so well known for his artistic creativity.

In the second part, of course, Kiriakov returns to the established approach in documentary cinema: for example, with the famous Bulgarian poet Stefan Tzanev’s commentary. Who is a relative, as it turns out, with participants in the Goriani resistance - the history of which has been shrouded in mystery for so many years, and who also contributes to the much anticipated explanation of the facts pedantically offered in the first part of the film. Yet it is of great importance that the viewers are already aware of those facts after having faced them for an hour in the previous part.

And if I personally regret about only one detail in “Goriani”, without claiming that I am right, it is the imaginary destruction of the Soviet Army Monument in Sofia at the end of the film. I would prefer, rather, to see this monument in the way it was painted up nowadays with the graffiti that were too quickly removed by the police. Because these graffiti turned into an incredible metaphor for the course of the human history. Because the monuments are also documents, in fact much more durable than paper, from which man must learn and learn in the future… and as such they must be preserved.

A POINT OF VIEW ON CINEMA ART FROM BETWEEN THE WORLDS

OF POST COMMUNISM AND DEMOCRACY

"GORIANI"/ "mountaineers"

OR WHEN THE CREATIVE EGO wittingly FORGETS ITSELF

(KINO magazine)

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