Студия за анимационни филми „София“ – развитие и международен престиж
Sofia Animated Films Studios – Development and International Prestige

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the problems related to the founding and development of the Sofia Studios for Animated Films, as well as the formation of a Bulgarian national school of animation. The studios were founded in 1970. This date, however, marks only the legal act that established animation in Bulgaria as an independent legal entity and separated it from the framework of the Studios for Feature Films. Prior to this moment, leading artists had already been established, a basic model for drawn film had been found, and the professionalism of Bulgarian artists was beyond all doubt. In this sense, the prehistory of the Sofia Studios is the fact the foundation that popularized its trademark throughout the world. Bulgarian animation received its first international award in 1959. Within only a decade – for the middle to the end of the 1960s – foreign professional circles were already talking about the Bulgarian animation school. During this period the leading model for Bulgarian animated film was created, which in its rich layers relied on satirical miniatures that criticized the status quo in society, while its imagery relied on the grotesque. A fundamental characteristic of the new model was the increased symbolism of the films, which were often based on an exaggerated social subtext. Its freedom of choice and interpretation of themes made Bulgarian animation an international hit at festivals. Simple statistics show that concisely this combination of socially significant themes and individual authors style won Bulgarian animators more than 150 prestigious international awards during the 1960s and 1970s alone. This rapid production tempo, which was kept up into the first half of the 1990s, showed that authors of Bulgarian animation were serious competition even for the most popular and beloved foreign authors. The article focuses on the examination of films emblematic of Bulgarian animated cinema – The Three Fools and A Clever Village (dir. by Donyo Donev), Esperanza (dir. by Ivan Andonov), Little Diurnal Music and Fear (dir. by Ivan Veselinov), Marriage (dir. by Slav Bakalov and Rumen Petkov), and films by Henri Koulev and Nikolay Todorov.

• Details
• Contents