Bulgarian National Television presents: Documentary about Petar Uvaliev

Thursday, 17/10/2024; 7:00 PM; “Sofia” Gallery

Book a seat HERE

Bulgarian Cultural Institute London is pleased to invite you to the screening of the film from the BNT1 documentary series “BNT Presents”: “Bulgaroman and the Muses”.

With the special presence of:

Mr. Emil Koshlukov, the Director General of the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) and Chairman of the BNT Management Board

Mr. Ognyan Kovachev, screenwriter of the film

Bulgaroman and the Muses, 2021, 56 min.

Film from the BNT1 documentary series “BNT Presents”

Premiere: 9 October 2021, 9 pm, BNT1

Directed by Dimitar Sharkov

Idea and Script Ognyan Kovachev

Camera Plamen Gerasimov

With Irina Nedeva, Stanislava Kalcheva, Emil Koshlukov, Ivo Hadzimishev, Nikolay Yordanov, Ognyan Kovachev and the special participation of Sonia Rouve-Uvalieva.

The film is a visual essay about Petar Uvaliev aka Pierre Rouve (1915-1998) – one of the most prominent Bulgarian political émigré intellectuals in the United Kingdom during the second half of the XX century. In his homeland, he is famous mostly for the radio talks he read in front of the microphone of the Bulgarian section of the BBC Radio, as an external contributor, every week for 50 years. His “words on the wind”, as he jokingly called them, built a cultural and spiritual bridge between the world and Bulgaria, cut off behind the Iron Curtain at that time. But he also had numerous successful activities in other areas of British and European public and cultural life in general, which have remained less well known or more quickly forgotten.

Of special note is his work in the British film industry as an executive producer, screenwriter, director and other positions in the production of over 20 films, as a theater director, art critic, university lecturer, translator, etc. These aspects of Petar Uvaliev’s personality and work are discussed in the film by his wife, friends, filmmakers, journalists and academic scholars.

Emil Koshlukov, born in 1965 in the city of Pazardzhik, is the Director General of the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) and Chairman of the BNT Management Board. While completing his military service, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison for anti-state propaganda and served his sentence as a political prisoner. After his release from prison in 1989, he became the Chairman of the Federation of Independent Student Societies (FISS) and was one of the founders of the Union of Democratic Forces (SDS). In 1991, he won a scholarship from the Open Society Foundation-Sofia, which allowed him to complete his graduate education at the University of California (Santa Barbara), majoring in Political Science. In 2001, Koshlukov headed the pre-election campaign of His Majesty Simeon II, who was elected Prime Minister in the summer of the same year. In the period 2001-2005, he was a deputy in the 39th National Assembly and Chairman of the political party “New Times”.

In 2005-2009, Emil Koshlukov was the host and producer of the show “Hedgehog” on Eurocom TV. During 2010-2014, he founded and managed the “No Frame Media Bulgaria” Production Company, which became undisputed leader in terms of the number of productions created for the Bulgarian TV market. It works simultaneously with the four major national televisions – BNT, BTV, Nova TV, and TV7 – providing shows and formats in all television genres – journalism, sports, politainment, social topics, lifestyle, and reality shows. From 2010 to 2014, Koshlukov was the author and presenter of “The Factor (Weekend with…)” on TV7, the first journalistic TV programmme in the weekend morning time zone in Bulgaria. From 2015 to 2017, he was a presenter on BNT Channel 3 and a consultant on various media projects. From December 2017 to April 2019, he was the Head of Programming at Channel 1of BNT. Since January 2018, until his appointment for Director General, Koshlukov has also been the host of the journalistic show “More of the Day” on BNT 1.

Ognyan Kovachev, born in 1961 in the city of Varna, is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literary History in the Department of “Theory of Literature” at the Faculty of Slavic Studies of the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. Also there, in 2008, he founded the “Literature, Cinema and Visual Culture” MA programme, the first of its kind in Bulgaria, of which he is a permanent co-chair. He specialized in Christ Church College, Oxford (2007), was a researcher and guest lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, with the support of the Fulbright Commission (2011), and a lecturer in Bulgarian language, literature and culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College London (2009-2013). He also taught at HTQ Institute “Dr. Petar Beron”-Varna, Shumen University “Konstantin Preslavski”, New Bulgarian University and Southwest University “Neofit Rilski”.

Kovachev is the author of over a hundred scholarly publications in Bulgarian and in English, of the monographs „Готическият роман. Генеалогия, жанр, естетика” (2004) and „Литература и идентичност: Преображения на другостта”  (2005). He is editor of the translation in Bulgarian of Edmund Burke’s “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful”; of the “Reading in the Age of Media, Computers and the Internet. Papers from the International Conference in Honour of Prof. Wolfgang Iser (Sofia, 2000)”; Петър Увалиев. „Пет минути с Петър Увалиев. Радиобеседи. Част I и II” (2015, 2020); „Повторение, обновление – практики на римейка” – в: Studia Literaria Serdicensia, Year I, 2021, vol. 1, and others. His translations from the English include George Orwell’s “Essays” (1994), Peter Steiner’s “Russian Formalism. A Metapoetics” (1995), William Godwin’s “Things as They Are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams” (2010), and shorter academic and fiction pieces of writing.