SOFIA: Ivan Pavlov has been elected president of the Union of the Bulgarian Film Makers.
SOFIA: The Bulgarian National Film Center (NFC) will establish a new fund for young directors of short film projects produced within five years of graduation. The plan will support ten projects with 15,000 EUR each twice a year, and the quotas will be implemented by the end of 2013.
SOFIA: The 32nd edition of Bulgaria’s national Golden Rose film festival will not take place in 2013 due to an insufficient number of completed films for the competition program.
VARNA: One of Bulgaria’s most popular film festivals, Love is Folly, is headed for a close three-year cooperation with Belgium's Mons International Love Film Festival. Dedicated to the theme of love on screen, both festivals form an important part of a recently updated cooperation agreement between Bulgaria, the French Community of Belgium, the Walloon region and the Brussels Capital region. Because of their similar profile, the agreement sets up financial and organizational support for the two festivals through 2015.
SOFIA: The final analogue signal switch-off originally planned for 1 September will go off 1 November because of delays in getting out vouchers for free TV converters to low-income households.
SOFIA: The Nu Image/Millennium Films mega production The Expendables 3, which leading man Sylvester Stallone co-wrote, began shooting in Varna, the postcard-perfect Bulgarian Black Sea town, 19 August.
SOFIA: An ambitious new 12-part political thriller series about a fictional daily newspaper, Fourth Power, will finally air on pubcaster Bulgarian National Television in September, following its victory over real-life political intrigues. It will be the most significant original production since the The Ungiven, which recounted the rescue of 48,000 Bulgarian Jews from the death camps during World War II.
SOFIA: With a 40% jump in admissions to 2,716,090 and box office up nearly 43%, at 11,691799 EUR, for the first six months of 2013 compared to last year, Bulgarian theatrical biz is booming. Average ticket price has also climbed from 4.24 EUR in 2012 to 4.30 EUR.
Award-winning director Kostadin Bonev (Warming Up Yesterday's Lunch, 2002; Europolis-The Town of The Delta, 2009) is shooting his full length documentary Six Stories On A Romantic Execution about the life and death of Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov, one of Bulgaria’s most important poets.
Renowned for his original talent and unconventional style, Silver Bear-winning Bulgarian director Georgi Djulgerov (Advantage, 1977) is in postproduction on his 15th feature, Buffer Zone. The young company Front Film, run by the director’s ex-students, Nadejda Koseva and Svetla Tsotsorkova, was awarded with 472,430 EUR by the Bulgarian National Film Center (NFC) for the project.
