Divorce Albanian Style Shown in Sofia’s Kinomania Film Festival
Directed by Bulgarian Adela Peeva, the film traces the fates of three Albanian men and their foreign wives. In 1961, when Albania broke off its relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Block countries, Albanian men married to foreign women were forced to separate from them, while the women were accused of foreign espionage and either sent back to their countries or imprisoned.
While some couples managed to stay together and others divorced or separated, Hodja’s regime’s drive to get rid of the “public enemies” ruined many people’s lives whose only crime was loving one another.
This is not the first film that Bulgarian director Adela Peeva makes about the Balkans. In her 2003 documentary, Who’s is this song?, she tried to track down the origins of a song that each Balkan country claimed as its own.
Sofia’s Kinomania Film Festival continues until November 29. A selection of films that have not been shown in Bulgaria until now can be seen.
Divorce Albanian Style will be shown next at the end of November, at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.
Epicure
Balkans
Three Bizarre Watermelon Recipes
The watermelon – this bright, contrasting symbol of summer, according to many residents of the Balkans, is a kind of trademark of their peninsular heat. Full Story
Curiosity Chest
Balkans
The Red and White Strings that Welcome Spring in Bulgaria and Romania
I remember walking along Canal Street in New York’s Chinatown on March 2 a few years ago, when I saw a man sporting a small ornament made of red and white thread pinned to his coat lapel. He must be Bulgarian, I thought to myself with a sudden rush of homesickness, but now realize that he may have been Romanian as well.
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Useful Reads
Bulgaria
Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (2008) | By Kapka Kassabova
Danube blues
Text by Nicholas Lezard for The Guardian*
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Music
Bulgaria
The Choir that Turned England a Bit Bulgarian
One of the few constant sources of pride for Bulgarians is traditional folk music, and especially singing. But not the Oriental-beats-modified kind that often booms in nightclubs, giving their clientele the urge to jump atop tables and chairs and sway their hips around; rather the kind that, when heard, mesmerises you and gives you goose bumps, the kind that is haunting with its out-of-this universe quality, mostly figuratively but sometimes literally as well.
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Photogalleries
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A Perfect Shot
In Homo Urbanus Europeanus, exhibited May 9-24 in front of the National Theatre in Sofia, Jean-Marc Caracci presents his photographs of people in the urban environment of European capitals.
RED&WHITE SOFIA. On the 1st of March Bulgarians say goodbye to the winter. They buy each other red&white threads to carry around until they see a stork and spring can begin. Photography by Lode Desmet
BULGARIA D'OR: The Bulgarian countryside, patinated with the noble golden dust of the autumn. Photographs by Lode Desmet
360 degrees Bulgaria, an exhibition by photographer Alexandar Ivanov, is on display at the Sea Garden in Varna until August 28. It will be shown at Plovdiv’s Central Square from Sept 5.
The exhibition Photographs of a Trip Through Bulgaria by Hungarian photographer András Balla can be seen in Sofia's Hungarian Cultural Institute, at Aksakov 16 Street, until August 22
Instant Spring in Sofia | Photographs by Lode Desmet
Off-the-season Beauty of Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast | Photographs by Adelina Iliev
Bulgaria's Northern Black Sea Coast
Photographs by Albena Shkodrova
excellent smugs