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Anelia Kassabova
raised in an "Aesopean language", " which filmmakers had to adopt in order to
avoid censorship. Valchitsata followed the innovative line characteristic of R. Val¬
chanov, attempting to break with the aesthetic codes of socialist realism. Valchanov
worked within an aesthetic and conceptual mode that was decidedly figurative; his
work was located in the context of a more general cinematic turn to allegory in
the second half of the twentieth century—beyond East and West. There is a nar¬
rative to be followed in the film, presenting the main moments in the LES; but it
leaves the “true-to-life” storytelling to evoke cinematic parable, operating with such
structural elements as black-and-white, the privileging of the fragment, and use of
metaphor. The LES boarding school became decontextualized from the concrete
situation, thereby, preparing it for “emblematic purposes”. The literary scenario
was revised—direct ideological messages referring to the progressive role of the
Communist Party congresses and the Soviet October revolution, the demonization
of capitalism, and others were cut.
Hooliganism
‘The film was the first attempt to give wider visibility to the problem of hooligan¬
ism. Taking into consideration the context in communist Bulgaria at that time,
dismantling the communist policy towards the hooligans and questioning the stig¬
matizing societal attitudes was a statement of high political importance.
‘The massive building of the courthouse in the capital’s centre formed the back¬
ground for the opening scene of the film. The relatively long scenes and sequences
of the court process visually conveyed the power of the state and the lack of re¬
spect to the individual as did also the official, strict spatially divided court set¬
ting, with the judges in front on a podium and Ana (The She-Wolf) in the dock
(Figs 4 and 5).
The adolescent Ana has no opportunity to be heard or to contest any of the al¬
legations against her. Her only way to react is to be insolent, representing by this,
symbolically, the idea of independence and freedom. The characters of all students
in the LES, especially Ana (the character viewers could positively identify with),
were developed in order to undermine the official political image of the “immoral”
girl. It is typical of the Bulgarian cinema of the 1960s that the social critique was
embedded mostly in female characters.** Ana was constructed as a strong character,
7 Aesopean language is defined as “a form of literature, like Aesop’s animal fables, which veils itself in alle¬
gorical suggestions, hints, and euphemisms so as to elude political censorship” (Tyrrell 2000: 3-4). A quo¬
tation from an interview in 2006 of director Nikola Korabov: “There was a lot of Aesopean language used,
a lot of ambiguity, and our films resembled very much the famous phrase of Jean-Claude Carriére ‘the
invisible film’. We presented one thing, the public perceived another. The other thing was hidden ‘under’
the movie”. http://www.filmmakersbg.org/art-culture-Nikola-Korabov2.htm (last accessed on: March 7,
2016). For a detailed analyses on art in the 1960s see Hristova 2005; Stanimirova 2012.
% An example is the banned film Ponedelnik sutrin (Monday Morning’), directed by I. Aktasheva &
H. Piskov, script by N. Tiholov, 1966.