Interview with Sylvia Pesheva
Interview with Sylvia Pesheva
Question: What have you been doing recently?
Sylvia Pesheva : Recently I’ve been working with Kalin Kalinov, a producer, a young boy, younger even than me. We applied for low-budget films. This year we made a short film based on a script written by a girl who won a contest in Dupnitsa at a festival for short stories. They gave us 6,000 leva, we took the money in January and in March we were already filming, we had only two days of shooting…
At Goethe Institute we met with Richard Blank and there we made a short movie on a given topic - "Fortress". His son organized an exhibition in which all sculptures, paintings, and multimedia were be on the topic "Fortress". We were split into two groups and each group had ideas - everyone presented their idea and then we decided which idea we would start working on. We did a short movie – one day of shooting and on the following day – editing. We were three people, women only who are not film directors: Elena Genovska, Milena Ilieva, an actress and a girl - it turned out that she was the daughter of the screenwriter of "Canaries Season". She was holding the camera. And it turned out to be quite interesting. Fortunately, all the shots we took were static. Then we wrote a screenplay together with Milena Ilieva and we are now applying for...
Q: What is your film going to be about?
S. P. : By force of circumstances three people get together in a village in the course of one week: an 80-year-old woman, a widow who was attacked; a Syrian refugee accused of attacking her, who just happened to be passing there; and a female journalist investigating the case. The elderly woman was attacked and the refugee whom she sheltered was found at the spot. At the time of the attack she fell unconscious and they found a man leaning over her. She knows that it wasn’t him and said it wasn’t him. Actually the film tackles the gypsy issues because she says, “It was a gypsy man, from the village. But not one of the local gypsies, rather one from the ones that are brought here to vote for local politicians and mayors.” What goes on in the story is exactly what happened in Garmen - we had written that earlier in the script. And this thing is yet to be causing uproar in the future... The mayor of the village decided to speak, but the municipal mayor gives him as a gift an expensive SUV. And he refuses to talk. And there was recently an investigation about the expensive SUVs of mayors...”
Q : And have you applied before with some projects?
S. P. : Yes, at the previous session. With another script. There were short stories, two other scriptwriters...
Q: D o you agree that directing is primarily a male profession? Have you encountered such views?
S. P. : No. I have had no problems, no. For me, it makes no difference who is doing what. Well, at first they look at me with suspicion – just a meter and a half tall, what do I think I’m doing... But I don’t think the film director should necessarily be a two-meter giant...
Q: But people say...
S. P. : This is a problem of those people who imagine that the director surely must be a man. And if it is a woman, then it must be a woman with a hoarse voice, some scary creature... They have different expectations but when I begin working with the people that I have chosen, I have no problem.