Two weeks of Cinemania

With ninety films onscreen, the Cinemania festival in Sofia is today one of the country’s most significant cinema events running every year this season for two weeks. This year’s 23rd edition, opens November 13 with Carlos Saura’s most latest production I, Don Giovanni, an elegant retelling of the story behind the creation of one of Mozart’s operatic masterpieces.Screenings in five of Sofia’s cinema theatres (Hall 1 of the National Palace of Culture, Euro Cinema, Odeon, Kino Liumier and Dom na kinoto) run until December 3.Part of the programme will be on the silver screen of Plovdiv’s Lucky Cinema from 12 to 30 of November.

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Dressing up Bulgarian movies

More than 500 spectacular costumes, weapons, props and photographs from Bulgarian movies produced from the 50's to early 80's -the golden age of Bulgarian cinema- can be seen until the end of February in an exhibition at Sofia’s National Museum of History. The exhibition is dedicated to the Day of the Leaders of the Bulgarian National Revival and is curated by producer Evgeny Mihailov who had been directing the famed Nu Boyana Film Studios for nine years. Art director and designer of the show is Rumyana Troshanova, who has created sets for more than 150 theatre productions in Bulgaria.
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The world of Zlatyu Boyadzhiev

Zlatyu Boyadjiev (1903-1976) is one of Bulgaria’s most celebrated artists. An exhibition of his paintings and drawings is currently on show in Sofia and this gives a unique opportunity to get to know the work of a great European painter of figure compositions, portraits and landscapes, who’s largely unknown outside his native Bulgaria. The exhibition opened on October 22 –the artist’s birthday- at Zenith Gallery (former Eibank Gallery) and runs until November 15.
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Changing Urban Visions

The cities we live in and the public spaces we have are of a vital importance and therefore they need to be the subject of a large-scale discussion. And this is exactly what Sofia Architecture Week aims at. Held from October 30 through November 5, the event subtitled Changing Urban Visions is the largest international architecture forum in Bulgaria. Besides an intense lecture weekend marathon, this year’s edition is hosting exhibitions, discussions and presentations with free access for all interested.
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A fresh air at the Bulgaria Hall

Home to the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bulgaria Concert Hall hosts concerts by two fresh and dynamic distinguished ensembles in the 2009/10 season. The New Symphony Orchestra gives six concerts featuring Bulgarian and foreign soloists interpreting a diverse repertoire, while the Classic FM Radio Orchestra is present with an equal number of concerts at the 1930-built impressive hall. The season for the two orchestras opens October 11, 2009, and closes June 5, 2010.
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The Spirit of Budo

An exhibition that seeks the understanding of viewers about the brief history of Japanese martial arts, from the battlefield combat techniques (bujutsu) to popular sports or physical exercise tempering body and spirit (budo) is on show at the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia until October 14. The exhibition The Spirit of Budo: The History of Japan's Martial Arts is organized by the Embassy of Japan in Bulgaria and The Japan Foundation against a background of strong overseas interest in Japan's martial-arts culture.
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Boissonnas’ Mt. Athos photos in Sofia

A traveling exhibition dedicated to Swiss photographer Frédéric Boissonnas, whose work left a deep mark on the collective memory of the Greeks is making its Bulgarian debut on September 16. This display of a selection from the 400 photographs he took during his two visits, in 1928 and 1930, to the monastic communities of Mount Athos in northern Greece can be seen at the Sofia branch of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture until October 25, 2009.
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New opera and ballet season in Sofia

The 2009/2010 season for the National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Sofia kicks off in a promising and ambitious way with ten opera and six ballet productions occupying the daily calendar of the year’s last quarter. Having exported its best production -Léo Delibes’ Lakmé- to Cyprus in September 2009, Bulgaria’s first lyrical theatre presented the programme for October, November and December 2009, which includes both older productions and new premieres.
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Goodbye Edmond

A farewell to a great Bulgarian contemporary artist who passed away so suddenly and untimely this year is paid this Fall at the Sofia Art Gallery. The tribute exhibition of works by Edmond Demirdjian is a good opportunity to have an encounter with the enormous positive energy his art was transmitting. You can visit it at the Bulgarian capital from September 17 to October 25.
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Sofia Dance Week: move your mind

The Sofia Dance Week is the first serious effort to establish a modern dance festival in Bulgaria as a permanent institution. Last year’s first edition of the dance festival was a huge success and brought to Sofia for the first time seven of the best European dance companies and choreographers, attracting a crowd of 10,000 that filled the streets and parks of the city. This second edition, from September 24 to October 1, 2009, is more promising.
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Small is beautiful

With some 1,500 works by 536 artists from 66 countries, the Sofia-based Lessedra Gallery has every right to claim that its 8th World Mini Print exhibition is one of the biggest of its kind. The annual summer event has been running in the Bulgarian capital since June 3, attracting hundreds of printmaking fans from across the country. You can visit the show until the end of August to enjoy imaginary works in small dimensions by artists from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand.
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Stalinist ghosts rise in Sofia

Totalitarian art commonly associated with the Communists and Nazi Germany, has its roots in early modernist avant-garde (around 1920-40). The National Gallery of Fine Arts in Sofia presents a very interesting exhibition that displays 45 paintings and 21 sculptures created by Bulgarian artists before the collapse of the communist regime in the country in 1989. Al artworks depict or praise Bulgarian and Soviet communist leaders. You can visit the show until September 6, 2009.
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Worshiping the Sun

When in 2007 Bulgarian TV organized the national contest for the Greatest Bulgarians, asking viewers to cast their vote and chose the nation’s most important personality through the centuries, it came as a surprise that people gave a place in the top ten listing to Petar Danov (1864–1944), a spiritual leader and founder of the School of Esoteric Christianity, also called Master Beinsa Douno. Photographer Nadejda Chipeva worked on that theme and took pictures of his followers, which she is now presenting in an exhibition at Sofia’s Eibank Art Gallery until August 7.
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