Bojina Who Sees Red
When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Bojina Panayotova was just eight years old. Shortly after, her family moved to Paris, where she discovered cinema. It brought her back to Bulgaria and her own past in her first feature film I See Red People, which had its world premiere as part of the Berlinale documentary program this year.
When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Bojina Panayotova was just eight years old. Shortly after, her family moved to Paris, where she discovered cinema. It brought her back to Bulgaria and her own past in her first feature film I See Red People, which had its world premiere as part of the Berlinale documentary program this year.
In it, Bojina returns to her Sofia roots twenty-five years after moving abroad with the feeling that there is something unsaid in her family. Why were they always able to travel? Did her parents have special privileges? Bojina asks them uncomfortable questions. Interspersing her detective work with old family archives, propaganda films and contemporary reporting, she creates a multi-layered and comic collage of sound and picture that reveals her odyssey between before and now.
Four years ago, Bojina presented her short film Cosmonaute sat the Sofia Film Fest, and this year she returns to the festival with I See Red People. Her filmography also includes Si je tombe (If I Fall) and À domicile (Home Match), and her work as a screenwriter includes the titles Hope, Not K.O. and In Limbo.
What is your view of the past? What are you looking for there?
I left for France after the changes, I was eight at the time. For me Bulgaria remained in the past. When I started shooting, I needed to catch up on what I had not lived, to connect before with now and to experience something in the present. But when I arrived in Sofia, the present immediately took me back to the past. The protests in 2013 were looking to the past. People were talking about communism and the traces of that regime today. And that immediately caught my attention. In order to move forward, I had to look back. And not only from a historical point of view, but also in my personal life.
When do you see red? The original title of your documentary is Je Vois Rouge, which literally means "I see red," and figuratively "I'm angry"…
The film plays with the way suspicion and paranoia infect everything. I'm literally looking at the world through a red filter. Red refers to communism, but also to blood. Blood as the root of a family and the blood that reddens your cheek with strong emotion. Je Vois Rouge refers to the moment when emotion catches you and overflows from all sides. My image as a daughter and at the same time a director rushes ahead like a bull in the arena, fighting against this red without realizing that this can hurt the people around it. In my case, I struggle with my own idealistic impressions of the red pioneers, who were my childhood heroes, but also with the opposite anti-red idealism, which makes me look at my parents through an exaggerated magnifying glass.
What's the story in I See Red People?
After twenty-five years in France, I return to Bulgaria with a camera and doubt that makes me feel dizzy: What if my family cooperated with the secret services of the totalitarian regime? What if my parents were part of that "red garbage" that people are protesting against? I began to investigate, I was ready for anything. Each step forward caused an upheaval in my family.
What inspired you to make this film?
It all started with the pioneer scarf. I am from the generation that was ready to join the pioneers but couldn't because the regime fell. The truth is that I have a very strong nostalgia for my childhood and an almost fetishistic attachment to the red scarf. Maybe because it is a symbol of that entire world that I was about to join, which suddenly collapsed. A French producer, with whom I had shared my obsession, told me: "Go to Bulgaria and start keeping a film journal!" So I arrived in Sofia with very little money, but with great freedom. Even before I knew what the story was going to be, I knew I wanted to experiment with a new way of documenting. The fact that I had neither a crew nor equipment actually helped me find my film language. I acted intuitively, without any self-censorship, without a pre-determined format, not knowing whether I would make a short, a documentary or a feature film.
What is your point of view when telling this story?
The whole story plays out live while I'm shooting. I am in the frame and the viewer sees how I deal with the situation and also, at the same time, with the shooting process itself, how I put cameras everywhere, especially in my own home. My methods as a director are visible and this creates a certain distance, sometimes it adds comedy. I did not want to force the viewer to only see my point of view, but to be able to ask the question – to what degree are the things she's doing acceptable?
How did you feel at the end of this process and how did it change you?
My parents and I have come a long way, which has brought us out of the classic family pattern. I realized that they do not belong to me, just as I do not belong to them. This individualization allowed for new intimacy and love between us. In the end, I accepted the inheritance they gave me. I accepted that Bulgaria is an important part of me. All this allowed me to become a mother myself. It's now my turn to pass on what I can ... And to make mistakes.
What do you think this film can offer the viewer and what feelings do you expect it to evoke?
I would be very happy if the film managed to arouse the viewer's curiosity about their own history. If they go home after the movie ends and try to talk to their loved ones. I also hope that the film can inspire a little freedom. Even when the plot is difficult, the task of cinema is to inspire freedom at least through the form it offers.
What does this film say to the older generation and what does it say to the younger one?
That they have something to talk about! That there are things they can do together. The most exciting thing about shooting was the way my parents became co-writers. In our rebellions against it, everyone built their own image without noticing. At the end of the process, we managed to consciously work together.
What makes a documentary story a work of art?
In my opinion, art seeks the universal dimension of the questions it poses and a new language to express them. There are documentaries that, in addition to documenting a given reality, speak a language that transcends boundaries. Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing not only documents the massacres in Indonesia, but thanks to its unique cinematic language, makes us experience the process of denial and awareness of the perpetrator.
In I See Red People, in addition to figuring out the theme, I also try to come up with a cinematic language that gives a sense of the vortex into which two generations can fall when there is a drastic historical shift.
I use a variety of images and formats: archival film on tape, ultra-pixelated digital videos filmed on a phone, dual Skype screens and hidden cameras. This patchwork conveys the chaos that occurs when you dig into the past and at the same time points to the question of today's methods of universal surveillance.
How does art manage to stay ahead of history as it is being written?
There is no "official history" of the recent past in Bulgaria and everyone gets to tell their own biased story. I think it's interesting to see how cinema can reflect this phenomenon. It is an art that speaks to the gut, not just the head. In this film I focus on the person, his feelings and states. I am interested in catharsis, not just factology.
What needs to change in order for documentary cinema to get its rightful place on the big and small screen in Bulgaria?
What needs protecting is diversity, authorial creativity, the creation of formats that oppose commercial standardization. It doesn't matter if we're talking about feature films or documentaries. Sometimes the two forms mix and that's exactly what's interesting. The problem begins with education. What kind of culture reaches the children who will create the culture of tomorrow?