Kamen Kalev

Kamen Kalev is a brave man: after Zornica Sofia’s Mila from Mars (2004), his feature debut, Eastern Plays is the second post-socialist Bulgarian film made without any government support. In spite of this, Kamen admits he wouldn’t try it again - it’s too hard, too risky and too low-paid to become a regular practice. But for the audience most of his difficult moments on the set are hidden far behind the screen, and we are only involved in Itso’s story - the main character and actor whose real lifestyle became Kamen’s inspiration to write the script of Eastern Plays.

Kamen Kalev was born in 1975 in the Southern Bulgarian coastal city of Bourgas, where he graduated from a French language high school in 1994. Two years later he started studying cinematography at the National Film Academy in Sofia but decided to continue his education in Paris. Back in Bulgaria he shot commercials and music videos while his short movies Get the Rabbit Back and Rabbit Troubles (both co-directed by Dimitar Mitovski) were selected for the Critics’ Week, in 2005 and 2007 respectively. After this success, Kamen was quite impatient to shoot his feature debut. As Bulgarian film financing is slow and not very flexible, Kamen and his producer Stefan Piryov (a childhood friend who studied film producing in New York) decided to take the difficult road - a totally independent production supported by private sponsors and the help of friends. They presented the project at the 5th Sofia Meetings pitching, which is part of the Sofia Film Festival, then shot the movie in the summer of 2008. Soon afterwards the international company Memento Films bought the distribution rights. That’s how Eastern Plays was born and dropped straight into the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes this year for its international premiere. This hasn’t happened to a Bulgarian film since the early 90s, when two of the first and strongest post-socialist reflections were competing for the camera d’or – Margarit and Margarita by Nikolay Volev and The Camp by Georgi Djulgerov. And it’s no coincidence that Eastern Plays is the next one after so many years. This film is also an evaluation of the Bulgarian presence as a result of the gap between generations who have grown up in different societies; an updated reflection of the current social crisis which is creating lost and confused human beings.

The plot of Eastern Plays is compelling and sincere. It has been able to preserve a specific atmosphere of Sofia’s streets, full of young people who have lost their meaning in life. One of them is Itso, a thirty-five-something who tries to give up heroine by following a methadone programme and spends his evenings drinking beer. He is trying to get (re)socialized by working as a carpenter (instead of painting, which is his cherished dream) and has a passionless relationship with a young drama student. He is alienated from his family: an always angry father, his silly mistress and a younger brother who is involved in the local Nazi subculture. Itso’s mediocre existence changes when he becomes a witness of a racist attack on a Turkish family and his heart wakes up to a jolt of real human communication.

Hristo Hristov, who plays Itso, is a non-professional who performs his own life. The story of Eastern Plays was invented by Kamen, but the details are Hristo’s own - clothes, places, habits, specific slang. Most of the other actors are professionals and Kamen admits it was quite tough to unite the whole cast in an organic mixture of senses and emotions. The ensemble is also joined by talented Turkish actresses Hatice Aslan (recently seen in Three Monkeys by Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and the young and prominent Saadet Isil Aksoy, who is director-producer Semih Kaplanoglu’s favourite discovery. Unfortunately though Eastern Play’s story doesn’t finish with the credits. Only a week after the film wrapped Hristo Hristov died of an overdose, which turns Kamen Kalev’s movie into a sad providence on the edge of art and reality.

Mariana Hristova