The Bright and Dark Side of Things

This first feature film by Binka Jeliaskova was made alongside her husband, the screenwriter of many of her works, and focuses on a group of young revolutionaries who witness the death of a comrade at the hands of the Nazi army. Years later, in a country now devastated by unemployment and poverty, one of the survivors, a member of Parliament, decides to erect a statue of his fallen friend. When he finds himself surrounded by critics, he begins a purge. A film banned for 33 years by the Bulgarian Communist Party that anticipated Polish protest films, the Czech New Wave and inaugurated the exposure of state totalitarianism that marked the bankruptcy of communism in the Eastern Bloc. 

A film that returns to the universe of The Last Word (Poslednata Duma), where Binka Jeliaskova explored the circumstances of a group of women sentenced to death for their anti-fascist political struggle during World War II. In Lullaby (Nani-Na), we meet children who, because their mothers are imprisoned, are born and raised in the penitentiary. Their lives and destinies are forever marked by the dreaded figure of prison.

The final chapter of Binka Jeliaskova’s Silence Trilogy is also her last film, which was also her only foray into television and was originally divided into two episodes. The plot revolves around two very different girls, united by having the same name: Nadezhda (in English, Hope). But despite their different temperaments and goals, little by little, their dissimilarities fade and their roles reverse. 

The titular bath takes place on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and is taken by an idiosyncratic group of friends who get together during the summer holidays for a celebration that has become a tradition. But like all traditions, its constant observance has turned it into a boring obligation. To deal with the discontent, there’s nothing better than testing the line between life and death. A recipe for the tragic and the oneiric. The second chapter of the Silence Trilogy.

The Last Word (Poslednata Duma) is a non-linear film that blends the past and present of a group of six women who are sentenced to death for their anti-fascist political struggle. One of the only films by Binka Jeliaskova to premiere in Portugal, in the summer of 1975 after a run in the Cannes Official Competition, it was also her most internationally recognized. 

Binka Jeliaskova directs the film that marks the beginning of her Silence Trilogy: The Swimming Pool (Baseynat), The Big Night Bath (Golyamoto Noshtno Kapane) and On the Roofs at Night (Noshtem Po Pokrivite). The Swimming Pool portrays a triangle, one that plays with notions of love, desire, friendship and performance. The protagonists are a lonely widower, Apostol, who discovers Bella, a teenager disillusioned with her first love, on the night of her graduation. The harmonious balance is broken by the actor, Boyan. 

A political allegory with unique imagery: a barrage balloon floats through the Bulgarian countryside, flying over village after village. The peasants who watch it or chase it make comments about the origin of such a powerful object, untethered from the surface. But the barrage balloon also comments from its point of view, seeing humanity as small and ignorant. The Bulgarian Communist Party saw the allegory as an attack on the state and banned the film. 

Binka Jeliaskova makes her solo directorial debut with this love story set in Nazi-occupied Bulgaria, inspired by the author’s experience in the Partisan resistance, here mirrored in her experience of armed struggle in contrast to the blossoming of love. Winner of the main prize at the Moscow Film Festival, it was a blockbuster success in Bulgaria. The opening film in Mark Cousins’ documentary series Women Make Film, it’s considered to be the first Bulgarian film directed by a woman.