Settling Accounts With the Past

Both are graduates of the National High School for Ancient Languages and Cultures, then the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts, and both specialized at the FABRICA research center in Italy. They are the founders of the Bulgarian Photographic Association and the production company Agitprop, and in general have become perfectly communicating vases working in cinema, visual arts and photography. After many years of freelancing for leading Bulgarian and international publications and advertising agencies, Georgi Bogdanov and Boris Missirkov are turning to cinema and visual art. cTheir experience has always been connected to the documentary genre, and over time they have developed their own highly recognizable style as directors of photography of some of the most popular and iconic titles in the genre. The development of their authorial styles behind the camera and as producers gradually spilled over into their own documentaries, which continue to settle accounts with the past, as they like to say. Examples include Palace for the People, which guides the viewer through five emblematic buildings of the former socialist bloc, The Ladino Ladies' Club about a disappearing language, And The Sweetest Thing about the tiny details of everyday life before 1989.

Their latest film The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, with producer Martichka Bozhilova, premiered at several international festivals in the fall of 2021. However, the main characters in it are not cars, but people like a middle-aged German dentist, a Czech owner of a farm dating back to the fourteenth century, a Russian Marilyn Monroe, lowrider pioneers, extras in advertising productions, a Bulgarian politician, the owner of a retro museum, a village cleric and Norwegian car racer, all united by their passion for retro cars from the socialist period. Along with the movie, Missirkov and Bogdanov presented the exhibition In the Footsteps of the Glorious Past. It realizes a long-standing dream of theirs – to complement the cinematic experience with their photographic view of history, which includes shots of people and places that didn't make it into the film. The Bulgarian audience will first encounter both works in September. We spoke to them about the past and the present at a time they are editing a film about media freedom in the Balkans with stories by journalists from Serbia, Romania, Albania and Bulgaria. In the meantime, they are already working on their next project, which tells a story about the future of money.

Still from the movie The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, authors: Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov

Your work in cinema, as directors, cinematographers and producers, has always been very strongly linked with documentary cinema. What is the reason for your attachment to the genre and why do you prefer it?

"The truth excites me, which means it exists," the poet said ("Song of Truth", Georgi Konstantinov – ed. note). It just happened that way. Maybe it's a combination of being in the right place at an interesting time, and being the right people. 

Creating new worlds from scratch is more enjoyable in an exhibition space. It feels very good to fill an empty white space with things that have burst open in your head. As for film, we feel better as hunters, we like to pursue and pick at life as it is. And to let it fill in the picture we sketched at the outset.

 

Still from the movie The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, authors: Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov

How and why did you decide to move from cinematography and production to directing, and what was the biggest challenge when you first took on this role?

We have never thought of these roles as separate. We have always just felt as creators, no matter what role we were in. At one point, we came up with so many epic ideas that would require a ton of time and energy, and we realized that we could only inflict these on ourselves.

Your films always explore different endangered species from the past – languages, palaces, sweets, cars. Why do you have this need to look back, and is it nostalgia or some form of introspection?

There is no nostalgia, we just have accounts to settle. This is our way of parting with our demons, understanding our past, and dealing with the present. 

Since we started off with a quote, it's time for Edith Piaf: "Non, rien de rien/ Non, je ne regrette rien."

If you had to film a story about the present without focusing on the past, where would you start?

We would start with the first person we meet on the street. If you spend enough time with one person, you will find that each of us has a story worthy of being told. The hard thing is to get the person to trust that you will approach their story with honesty, then they let you in easily.

Still from the movie The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, authors: Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov

Your latest film, The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, isn't really about cars, it's about the people around those cars. You say that it should be thought of as a piece of music – why is that?

This is more of a wish that the viewer leave the rational at the doors of the cinema. The title of the film inevitably misleads you that this is a car movie. No, cars are by far the least important thing it is movie. This is actually a film about the present, like we discussed in the previous question. Some of our characters weren't even born yet when some of these cars were being produced, but now their lives revolve around them. Perhaps, for the first time ever, we took the risk to string together events and characters the way they connect in our heads – in a kind of poetic-musical line, not in terms of scholarly-historical logic.

You probably found dozens of stories related to this topic – how did you sift through them to find the ones that would go into the film, and were there any that you wanted to tell but could not?

The film is a kind of panopticon. When we started editing it, we cut each story into a separate short film, and then the complex arrangement of the puzzle pieces began. It took us a while to reach to the idea of strictly following the musical phrase of the story, but then things started to fall into place. As much as you love a story, if it breaks up the rhythm, you have to part with it. That's it.

Also for the first time ever, we got to make an old dream of ours a reality – to continue the story from a movie using a different format. Many of the things that did not make it into the film found a new life in an exhibition that took place last autumn in Bratislava, and we hope to show it in Sofia this autumn.

Still from the movie The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, authors: Boris Misirkov and Georgi Bogdanov

Everyone thinks that socialist-era cars can only be found in the former Eastern Bloc, but is that really the case? 

Socialist bloc cars were also exported to Western Europe and all around the world. The Lada Niva was a highly coveted car in France, Zastava Hugo was sold on the American market, Wartburg and Škoda were being sold in Norway. Not to mention the export of cars to Cuba. Nowadays you can meet collectors and fans of these cars all over the world.

In Bulgaria, we have a museum with one of the biggest collections of such cars in all of Europe, and one of the characters of our movie is a Norwegian man who is a long-time rally champion from the Škoda team.

Which stories surprised you the most when you were shooting and which images stuck with you?

 The young people from St. Petersburg who planned to conquer America in a Volga that they had rigged in a "low ride" style themselves.

When a character dies while the movie is still shooting, their image stays with you forever. It has happened to us before, but you can never prepare for this kind of thing. Manolcho, the last cleric in the Rhodopean village Peshtera, did not live to see the premiere of the film. His Moskvich Mariyka, with which he spent much of his life, was orphaned, but lived on later in the film.

 

Still from the movie The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, authors: Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov

What is your approach for getting under the skin of your characters and predisposing them to act naturally?

Do ut des (Latin for "I give, so you can give" – ed. note). We start by giving to our characters. We offer sincerity. We do not hide what we have come for and what we will look for. We give them time. We set aside as much time as needed to build trust. We pay a lot of attention to what is important for the character to tell and show us. And only at a much later stage do we reach toward the thing we are there for, and the thing we would like to hear and see. You have to give first, then you can receive. And you can never afford to lie. That would be disastrous. We stay in touch with many of our characters long after the movies wrap. This can be very stressful. The more movies you make, the more people you meet. But once you take from them, you can't refuse to give back.

All these cars are really time machines, but they can only travel back in time. You define them as time shelters, like in the novel of the same name by Georgi Gospodinov. How do you explain this need people have to reproduce the past and not let it go?

Maybe they also travel to the future, it just depends on who's behind the wheel.

Still from the movie The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, authors: Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov

And how do you explain young people's interest in this past, which they themselves have not experienced and do not remember. Why are they also nostalgic for it?

It's the perfect way to spend a few leva and use a bit of your imagination, and gain the cult status of owning a piece of history.

If there is some ideological continuity between your films about the past – starting with the palaces, through sweets to cars – what would be its natural sequel?

The future of money. And we're actually working on a movie about that now.

What kind of feature film would you make?