news

Documentary film to screen at the Bulgarian Consulate General

For Immediate Release

BINKA: TO TELL A STORY ABOUT SILENCE, a documentary about
Binka Zhelyazkova, one of Bulgaria's most formidable Soviet-era film directors, will screen at the Bulgarian Consulate General, 121 E 62nd Street New York, NY 10021 (Between Park & Lexington Avenues) on November 8th , 2007, Thursday at 7:00 p.m.

In her forty year career, Binka Zhelyazkova (b.1923) never shrank from
controversy. She was both a stylistic pioneer and at
the forefront of political cinema under Bulgaria’s Communist
dictatorship. Her allegorical and urban dramas examined human rights,
artistic freedom and the legitimacy of the political system itself, and
many of her films were banned from distribution. By intercutting
riveting scenes from Binka’s films with rare archival footage and
candid interviews with former Bulgarian studio executives, colleagues,
critics and film professionals, this provocative portrait reveals the
pressures and complexities that arise when art is made under
totalitarianism.

Filmmaker Elka Nikolova is a native of Bulgaria. In 1994, after completing her
BA in psychology at the Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia, she moved to
New York to study at the New School for Social Research where
she concentrated in film production (MA, Media Studies 2001).
Following her interests in human rights and the contribution of women
to the arts, Nikolova began researching the life and work of Binka Zhelyazkova.
While working in the NY film industry on films including Swimfan 85, Touched,
and Midnight Football and currently at Dateline, NBC she completed
the production of Binka: To Tell a Story About Silence.

Writer/director: Elka Nikolova, Directors of Photography: Vanyo
Georgiev and Hristo Bakalov, b.a.c., Editor: Svetoslav Vladimirov,
Music: Roumen Boyadjiev and Roumen Boyadjiev Jr..; Produced by Stanimir
Trifonov; Associate producers, Dawn Jordan, Stephanie Vevers.

Binka: To Tell a Story about Silence (2006, 48 min, in Bulgarian with
English subtitles)

Q&A with the filmmaker and reception will follow.

US premiere MOMA April 4th, 2007
Winner of the Audience award, South East European Film Festival, LA, 2007
The award for debut film at the Golden Rhyton Film Festival for Non-Fiction Films, Plovdiv, 2007

For more information about the film please visit:
www.binkadoc.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siEfWhMw0v0

Contact: Elka Nikolova
718.986.6136
elkanikol@yahoo.com
www.binkadoc.com