1959 Stara Zagora, Bulgaria

Yoanna Petkova
1941
Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Interviewed on January 27, 2024
by Valeri Vankov

The first time I went to see a movie was in 1959 when I was still a high school student in Stara Zagora. I was renting a place there with a friend of mine. Our landlady was an usher at a movie theater and it was because of her that we started going to the movies often. The theater was huge because it was located on the main street of the town. I was impressed by how beautiful the auditorium was and how big and comfortable the seats were. I also remember that there were pauses throughout the screenings during which the projectionist would change the film reels.

The movie that not only I but also many other people of my generation associate our youth with is Awaara (translated in Bulgarian as “Бродяга,” lit. meaning “The Tramp”). It is an Indian film in which the lead role is played by one of the most famous Indian actors of all time: Raj Kapoor. I don’t recall the story very well, but I remember that it was a musical and that it was about a young man who was forced to become a thief and his father who was a judge. The film was in black and white. The hardships of the protagonist made all the movie-goers cry. It was the first film about life in India I had ever seen. The actor was very handsome and charismatic, and the soundtrack sounded really different from the Bulgarian folklore music I was raised with. This movie is etched in my memory as a powerful and emotional experience.

When I came back home to Radievo for breaks, I would also sometimes watch movies at the local theater. The atmosphere was very different because the venue was a lot smaller and everyone knew each other. For example, during the pauses, the projectionist would tell us what film would be screened the following week. Also, even though the theaters did not allow food and drinks inside, as they were deemed indecent and distracting, people in Radievo would often bring packets of seeds with them, leaving a huge mess behind.

Years later, when I moved to Sofia, I also went to the movies often, although some of them had enormous queues for tickets and I had to wait in line for hours. There were no advertisements or movie trailers back then. Instead, there were movie theaters which would invite a film critic before the screening of a movie to give a lecture on the genre, the director, the cast, and other details of the movie the audience was about to watch. These were venues that showed carefully selected films which had already been shown or were about to participate in film festivals. All other theaters would broadcast newsreels (translated in Bulgarian as “кинопреглед,” lit. meaning “film review”) before the film itself. These newsreels were weekly ten-minute propaganda shorts on socialist themes, featuring news about achievements in the labor sector, five-year plans that were met ahead of time, awards for distinguished members of the regime, the congresses of the Bulgarian Communist Party, official visits and exchanges between the prime ministers of Bulgaria and other socialist countries as well as the values, lifestyle, and culture of the communist society. In general, these newsreels would glorify socialism and its benefits while criticizing the West and its supposedly capitalist and imperialist regime. If one sees such a newsreel, with its typical pathos and propaganda rhetoric, accompanied by solemn music and clichéd phrases, and imagines that television, in the form of two national channels, was also strictly censored and indoctrinating, operating only at certain times of the day and filled with news and programs produced entirely in the spirit and style of these newsreels, they will understand how any foreign film that deviated from this norm was seen as a breath of fresh air and would cause people to rush to see it.