Masquerade games in Bulgaria and in Ukraine – a highlight of the sixth edition of the OKO Film Festival

Sofia is the third city to host the sixth edition of the OKO International Ethnographic Film Festival, after the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the city of Bolgrad were its hosts from September 5 to 14.

The OKO film festival has a mission - to show Bulgarians what is happening in Ukraine

Like every year, the current edition from October 3 to 11 has its main theme – folk masquerade games, to which the main photo of all advertising materials eloquently points us. Its author is photographer Ivan Shishiev.

"He photographed the mummers' groups that came to Kyiv and had the thematic photos that we needed for the exhibition that we made," the festival's director, Bessarabian Bulgarian Tetyana Staneva, told Radio Bulgaria. "Every year we have a certain motto and something that unites the peoples. It turned out that for us these are the folk masquerade heroes - the mummers (kukeri) in Bulgaria, and in Ukraine - the malanka.

We found that they are also characteristic of almost all European peoples and everywhere they have almost the same mission - to awaken the earth, to drive out the darkness, to welcome the light, to drive away evil.

And so we decided that part of the exhibition would be with Ivan's footage, and the rest would be from a Ukrainian agency that photographs the traditions in the country."

Photographer Ivan Shishiev: Time is the detail that is most difficult to capture in a photograph

The documentary film "Dead Flower" (original title "Мертва квітка"), which begins the eight-day film panorama, is another author's story by Tetyana Staneva, which tells about the winter ritual of Bulgarians in Ukraine and how they live there:

"This film was part of the Bulgarian program that we broadcast in Kyiv, where in addition to the exhibition, we also showed the Bulgarian mummers who came, we had the financial opportunity to organize a whole feast with Bulgarian food and wine, we also danced Bulgarian folk dances, accompanied by Bulgarian musicians. People in Kyiv still discuss the festival as a phenomenon that they have never seen before, and I don't know if they will see it again. The film is about my village, all the characters in it are from there (the village of Krynichnoe, Bolgrad region - ed. note).

I have archive photos from 2020, in which I filmed us having fun, celebrating Christmas with Christmas songs and a Christmas traditional dance, and before that how I made wax flowers with several girls. The girls have to hang them on the hat of the bachelor that they choose. Then the pandemic started, and then the war, so that was the last time we gathered so en masse and peacefully. It was a great experience and looking at the photos from it today, you cry because you remember how you didn't realize how happy you were and what awaited you."

This past summer, Tanya reunited with some of the girls and melted the wax flowers to make candles for the soldiers in the trenches. But this story, filmed six years ago, also shows something frightening - the boys who then were at the gathering are now of mobilization age and are soldiers.

"Every viewer will very clearly see and feel how the war broke our lives and all the characters in the film go through their transformation, what the girls talk about before and after - completely different conversations and moods" - the filmmaker shares with us.

Tetiana Staneva: Don't look on the war in Ukraine as if it is some kind of show behind a glass pane

Among the Bulgarian films at the festival are titles that have already been shown in cinemas in Bulgaria, such as "Gundi - Legend of Love" and "Class 90", but along with them we will be able to enjoy a number of short and feature-length films from Ukraine, access to which we will have only during the days of OKO International Ethnographic Film Festival. Among them is the documentary "2000 Meters to Andriivka", which will be the Ukrainian contender for the Oscar.

"We are trying to balance the program - to present more Bulgarian films in Ukraine, and in Bulgaria - Ukrainian ones, because we understand that besides us there is no one else to show Ukrainian cinema here," Staneva explains to us, but in addition to the war films, among the Ukrainian titles there is even a comedy - "I, Victory and Berlin" by the legendary Ukrainian musician Kuzma Scryabin. A total of 95 film titles.

As last year, the audience in Sofia will also have the opportunity to attend a series of discussions on important topics, such as "The Power of Cultural Diplomacy through Films", "Tradition and Women's Discrimination - Films on the Topic as a Reflection of the State and Achievements of Humanity", "Preserving the Cultural Heritage and Memory of Bulgarians in Ukraine, as Part of the Cultural Heritage and Historical Memory of Bulgaria" and "Bessarabian Bulgarians and Russian Propaganda - Truths and Lies about Language and Identity".

Radio Bulgaria's previous conversation with Bessarabian Bulgarian Tetiana Staneva was days after Donald Trump won the US presidential election. The current one takes place relatively soon after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and the subsequent statements - does the end of the war seem closer or further away today?

"It seems more distant to me, although I would like to say otherwise. If at first everyone wanted to believe that Trump would be more radical and would end the war in 24 hours, we had no illusions and knew that these words were pure populism. However, we still thought that his intentions were to achieve a quick result, but after a number of meetings dedicated to Putin and conversations with him, we realized that the American president is an absolutely unreliable person, because today he says one thing and tomorrow another. That is why I think that the time has come when we should rely less on the USA. Now Europe has its only interest – its safety," Tetiana Staneva says.

Staneva believes that the bureaucracy, which does not allow one or another urgent decision to be made, puts the fate of many cities and people in Europe at risk and added: "This war does not ask, it is quick and requires non-standard decisions to be made."