Gorna Bela Rechka
Iranian-Canadian photographer Babak Salari will teach a 6-day intensive course in social photography in the pristine nature of Gorna Bela Rechka, Northwest of Bulgaria.

The course will take place during the exhibition by Babak Salari  „Traumas and Muracles: Portraits of Northwestren Bulgaria” will be on display in the National Art Gallery in Sofia (5-25 August) and will serve as a case- study during the course.

The course will offer intensive theory and practical exercises, as well as different photographic techniques. Participants will be working both individually and in small groups under the expert guidance of Babak Salari. They will be able to enjoy the summer-time beauty of the mountain village, coupled with home-made food, morning mountain walks, exploring the area in depth and social gatherings.

The course will combine a lectures in social history and memory  of the Northwest  given by Diana Ivanova

Program:

The course is aimed at people who take an active interest in photography, have a camera of their own and are willing to probe deeper the creative and technical aspects of digital photography.

The number of participants is limited to 10 people.

Babak Salari will tailor the program according to participants’ needs and expectations. The course will be taught in English, no translation is provided.

Subscription:

The course fee is 420 BGN. It includes tuition for 6 days as well as bed and breakfast. Participants will be accommodated in modest conditions in the village houses. The deadline for confirmation is August 3rd, 2010.  You can confirm you participation by sending an e-mail with your details (name, contact info, date of arrival, expectations from the course) to novakultura@gmail.com and paying the full course fee to New Culture Foundation bank account:

New Culture BG Bank account, reference: photography
in leva: BG60RZBB91551060434614
BIC: RZBBBGSF, Raiffeisenbank, Sofia 1504, ul. Gogol 18/20, SWIFT RZBBBGSF

It’s possible to transfer both euro and leva to this bank account. The number of participants is limited to 10 people.

Logistics:

The course will start on August 10th at 11.00 and will end on August, 15th. Participants are expected to arrive on August 10th in the morning. They will be responsible to come to Bela Rechka on their own and will receive detailed info about how to reach Gorna Bela Rechka or where to stay in Sofia if they arrive late. Lunch and dinner will be cooked alternatively by the village women, and other volunteers, the local restaurant and will be paid for separately.

Gorna Bela Rechka and New Culture Foundation / http://novakultura.org/en/

Gorna Bela Rechka has become a vibrant centre for cultural activities. For the past six years, New Culture Foundation has been organizing here the Goat Milk Festival which attracts participants from all over Europe – so the space is carries the marks of many artistic experiments. People are open, hospitable and fresh.

About Babak Salari / http://www.babaksalari.com

WELCOME!!

Photography
By  Babak Salari  (Iran/Canada)

National Art Gallery, Sofia

Opening: 5  August 2010  18.00

“In the tradition of Capa and Salgado, Salari’s images are ones of close proximity ever revealing a mastery of the black and white photographic form, where shades of grey unfold an alternative, humane and necessary narrative of beauty and sorrow.”
 

Rawi Hage


Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for De Niro’s Game

My own experience of exile has shaped all my work
Babak Salari

In 2008 the Iranian photographer Babak Salari (living now in Canada) visits for the first time Bulgaria and its Northwestern part as a guest to the GOATMILK Memories festival in the village of Bela Rechka.
He is deeply moved by  the topics of loss, loneliness, separation and trauma that the whole region is experiencing in the last 20 years due to heavy economic migration of the young to the West or to other parts of Bulgaria. „The sense of disorientation, loss, pain, and isolation provide the common thread that link the two national experiences – mine, as an Iranian–Canadian, and that of the Bulgarians”, he says remembering his own exile in Canada for more than 25 years.

Together with Bulgarian journalist Diana Ivanova, born in the Northwest and one of the founders of the Memories Festival in Bela Rechka, he travels for more than a month through around 15  small villages surrounding Bela Rechka and documents in black and white photography old people in the region.
Together with the interviews by Diana Ivanova the project represents a rare collection of  stories about traumas and miracles experienced in the last years by the oldest inhabitants of the Northwest.

About Babak Salari:
A Montreal based photographer and teacher in photography. His projects explore marginality through documentary photography and environmental portraiture.

His latest work, “The Day after Freedom”, documented the determination of the people of war-torn Iraq to survive. “People In Between” confronted the split sense of being among exiled Iranian cultural workers, while “Children of Diaspora” examined the “post-exile” experience of second generation Iranian-Canadians. Earlier works: “Locating Afghanistan”, the cry of Afghani women and orphans during the war; “Off the Wall”, the realities of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation; “Faces, Bodies, Personas: Tracing Cuban Stories”, the unique experience of queer artists and intellectuals in Cuba; “Time in Juchitan”, a small Mexican town’s struggle against the global culture.

About Diana Ivanova:
Journalist and writer, in 2005 Diana Ivanova was a Millena Yesenska fellow at the IWM with the topic „Human library of socialism”. For her research „Hello, melancholy” published  in the Bulgarian weekly Capital she received the APA Journalism Award „Writing for Central and Eastern Europe”.
Since 2003 she is actively involved in creating new meeting places in the Northwestern region with the New Culture Foundation.
The topics of helplessness, trauma and migration in the Northwestern region  are among her current topics of interest that have led her again to Vienna – she is writing a PhD at the Sigmund Freud University in Vienna. She is also the scriptwriter for the documentary „The town of badante women” (Stedan Komandarev, 2010, www.badantewomen.com)

European  presentations of the project:

Vienna,Austria,  Institute for Human Sciences, 13 April – 30 June 2010

Munchen, Germany,  Josefstaller Assosiation, 17 April 2010

Bela Rechka, Bulgaria,  Goatmilk festival,  21-24 May 2010

Florence, Italy, Cultural Assosiation Il Palmerino, 15-17 September 2010

I, THE STORYTELLER

How do we tell stories? What do we tell? Why? To whom are we talking?

 Program

„My Street. Cuban Stories”
Book launch: 25 February 2010, 19:00
Sofia
ONDA Coffee Shop

edited by Diana Ivanova and Babak Salari
design by Raycho Stanev
www.janet45.com

My Street is a talking mirror, a page that recognizes us as we are.
Roberto Zurbano Torres,
Cultural critic, Havana

My Street: Cuban Stories is a uniquie col­lection of stories and photographs gathered  during autumn 2009 in 6 Cuban cities  by three people – a Bulgarian, an Iranian and a Cuban.

52 Cubans between 15 and 50 years  old wrote about theirs street and took pictures on them.

The result is a book full with poetry, nostalgia and intimacy, „The everyday tales of people who refuse to see the world stripped of its magic”, as Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov describes it.

Diana Ivanova
is a traveler, journalist and writer living in Sofia . She has primarily lived on streets with men’s names, from Hadzhi Dimitar to Petar Parchevich.

Babak Salari
is a Iranian-born photographer currently living in Montreal , Canada . He frequently changes the street he lives on. He has no street of his own at the moment.

Ulises Quintana de Armas
is an accountant by trade, a poet in spirit. He lives in Casablanca and works in Havana . He has never left Cuba .

www.my-street.org

Expect full program with workshops and concerts end of February!
Here is a taste of what is coming

GOATMILK 2010 21-24 May

Theme
I, THE STORYTELLER

How we tell stories today? What we narrate? Why we need to tell stories? Whom we recount?

We will look for the answers of these questions through the following main topics:

1. 1989 and the Northwest through the personal story
- 1989 – Mapping the Northwest project – lessons learnt
* workshop, presentation, exhibition, discussion and talk with Mariana Assenova, Chris Baldwin, Mihail Gruev

2. The stories of the monuments
- Parallels and differences with Franco’s Spain
* presentation, exhibition and discussion Mihail Gruev, Nikola Mihov , Ilko Assenov, Chris Baldwin

3. The shy (оr shameful) story of Migration
- Can we narrate the marginal - the Varshets case, a point of intersection with Cuba
* film show, workshop, exhibition and discussion with Diana Ivanova, Stefan Komandarev, Babak Salary

4. The secret tale of fairytales
- Fairytales in six languages from Istanbul, Roma tales from the other side of the bridge in Varshets
*workshop, installation and performance with Mariana Assenova, Chris Baldwin, Nilgun Oztunali, Greta Assenova

5. Northern tales
- 2 villages, 200 goats, 80 inhabitants – the paralel story of Undredal (Norway)
*presentation with Sophy Clemenz (Undredal-Bergen), Raycho Stanev, Diana Ivanova
Norwegian short docs screening, Norwegian goat cheese degustation

6. The songs of Bela Rechka
- The singing society presents the forgotten songs in new arrangement ( grandma Todorka Milevka )
*workshop and a concert with Milena Karadjova, Neda Cvetkova and others

7. The clothes as words
- White shirts from Bela (White) Rechka – how one of the festival’s symbols was born
* workshop and presentation – Galya Ivanova, aunt Deshka, aunt Nikolina

8. How to make bread in podnica (old ceramic dish) and in embers
- Svilen Klassanov and local women workshop

9. The Kazan place – never ending story
- readings, music, drums, dance, bar and dinner
*24 hours free program with Raycho Stanev, Galya Ivanova, Nadia Alexandrova, Klassanov and friends of Bela Rechka

Expect plenty of good news from us in 2010!

Thank you for sharing the road together with us!

The award-winning Iranian-Canadian photographer Babak Salari will teach a 10-day intensive course in photography in the pristine nature of Gorna Bela Rechka – a small village located in the Northwest of Bulgaria. From 21st to 30 of August, 2009 photo fans will be able to explore the concepts of creative photography: colour, light, camera angle, depth of field, composition, etc. as well as different photographic techniques working both individually and in small groups under the expert guidance of Babak Salari. They will be able to enjoy the summer-time beauty of the mountain village, coupled with home-made food, morning yoga sessions given by Diana Ivanova and evening gatherings around the bonfire at the kazan pub, created by VJ Raycho Stanev, http://e-rayo.net/gallery/kazan/.

About Babak Salari / http://www.babaksalari.com   

Babak Salari is a Montreal-based photographer and educator who chronicles lives at the margins of society. His documentary projects include: Iranian artists in exile; matriarchal, indigenous communities in Mexico; and gays and transvestites in Cuba. Recently, he documented those displaced and brutalized by war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Palestine. His interest in photography began as a teenager in his native Iran where he contributed to various publications. At the age of twenty-one, his political activities resulted in his imprisonment for six months by the Khomeini regime. Upon his temporary release from jail, he fled to Pakistan and, a year later, arrived in Canada where he resumed his study and practice of photography. His new multimedia work The Colour of My Dreams, examines death, exile and love.
Babak’s work has been exhibited internationally and published in magazines and journals, privately collected and exhibited in Canada, USA, Europe and Mexico. Two of his books Faces, Bodies, Personas: Tracing Cuban Stories and Remembering the People of Afghanistan were published by Janet 45 in Bulgaria in 2008. He has received many awards including a Gold Addy from the American Ad Federation in 2004 for his work Locating Afghanistan.

Program:

The course is aimed at people who take an active interest in photography, have a camera of their own and are willing to probe deeper the creative and technical aspects of digital photography: how to use the lenses, how to measure light, what is camera angle and depth of field, how to use colour in composition, plus different photographic techniques. They will work both individually and in small groups with Babak Salari on the premises of New Culture Foundation in Gorna Bela Rechka. The number of participants is limited to 20 people. Babak Salari will tailor the program according to participants’ needs and expectations. The course will be taught in English, no translation is provided.
For any questions, you can send an e-mail directly to Babak at: babaksalari@yahoo.com

Gorna Bela Rechka and New Culture Foundation / http://novakultura.org/en/

In Gorna Bela Rechka time has preserved many things in their authentic form. The village lies at an altitude of 500 m in the north-western part of the Balkan Range, about 100 km from Sofia. Little has changed here in the past century or two – the locals keep sheep and goats, and produce goat’s milk, cheese and curds, eggs, and seasonal vegetables. The village has also become a vibrant centre for cultural activities. For the past six years, New Culture Foundation has been organizing here the Goat Milk Festival which attracts participants from all over Europe – so the space is carries the marks of many artistic experiments. As a result of last year’s activities, for example, the village had its bell tower and rakia house (a distillery for Bulgarian brandy) restored and functioning.

Subscription:

The course fee is 420 BGN for Bulgarians and 420 EURO for non-Bulgarians. It includes tuition for 10 days as well as bed and breakfast. Participants will be accommodated in modest conditions in the village houses. The deadline for confirmation is July 31st, 2009.  You can confirm you participation by sending an e-mail with your details (name, contact info, date of arrival, expectations from the course) to radmila.mladenova@gmail.com and paying the full course fee to New Culture Foundation bank account:

New Culture BG Bank account, reference: photography
in leva: BG60RZBB91551060434614
BIC: RZBBBGSF, Raiffeisenbank, Sofia 1504, ul. Gogol 18/20, SWIFT RZBBBGSF

It’s possible to transfer both euro and leva to this bank account. The number of participants is limited. If the workshop doesn’t take place, everybody will be fully reimbursed.

Logistics:

The course will start on August 21st and will end on August, 30th. Participants are expected to arrive on August 20th. They will be responsible to come to Bela Rechka on their own and will receive detailed info about how to reach Gorna Bela Rechka or where to stay in Sofia if they arrive late. Lunch and dinner will be cooked alternatively by the village women, Babak or other volunteers, the local restaurant and will be paid for separately.

“How to make a bell” is an unusual guidebook you hardly could find anywhere.
After reading it, you will have a feeling to have read a meditation guidebook or elementary theory of music.

Investigating the case with the stolen bell of the village of Gorna Bela Rechka, the book puts attention to the variety of stories among the people in the village about the old bell and its disappearance, enlarges the context into the bigger picture - the phenomenon of stolen bells in Bulgaria in the last decade (a very surprising by itself and still not understood phenomenon), and reveals some of the secrets of the oldest bell casters in Bulgaria – the Plovdiv masters Veleganov. You could learn, for example, that the technology has never been written down. “Everything is oral and has been handed down by word of mouth. That’s why there is no leaking of information.” Also – you learn that
each bell is centered on some tone. The bigger the bell, the lower the tone. 60 kg is centered somewhere around E. 100 kg is centered somewhere around C.

This is a book about understanding our own experience in rebuilding lost traditional symbols of Bulgarian culture in today’s  European context. Because the question actually is, as Austrian psychoanalytic Elisabeth Vykoukal  puts it in the book - can we find new ways to be together? Because we all live in times where there are no more bells to call us to meet.

The book combines text and photography. The design is made by Raycho Stanev, who
in 2008  received the Special Award of the Union of Bulgarian Artists (during the first Biennale of Bulgarian design in Sofia) for the graphic design and logo of the project “The Bell of Bela Rechka”.

Compiled by Diana Ivanova
Publishing house “Janet 45”, Plovdiv
New Culture Factory, Gorna Bela Rechka – Sofia

www.goatmilk-fest.org



Each year the GOATMILK festival in Bela Rechka chooses a topic and explores the memories connected with that.
We have explored the sound of the bell of Bela Rechka, the Cyrillic letters, the private family history, the white shirts…Now we devote devote this year’s festival to the topic:
1989 – trauma or miracle?

!Action: bring a family photo from 1989 to create together a temporary family gallery of us in 1989
Bring also a book you connect with communism and make it a donation for our Personal Library of Communism

Check out the whole program and notice the extras!!

A Factory for New Culture project
Duration: 10 months (March - December)

Idea: In 2009 we face the fact that 20 years passed after 1989 - the end of communism. But do we all know what happened in 1989?  Where are the signs of memory of 1989 in our cities? How and where from young people could learn about 89?  How many young people know that this same year started the dramatic political and economical changes that affected people’s life in their own cities? Which are the facts that still remain half-expressed by their parents and grandparents?

All these questions need to be discussed and answered.  Mainly in Northwest Bulgaria where the majority of the population accepted 1989 not as the end of the totalitarian regime and a new opportunity for the better, but as a trauma.

Goal: The main goal of this project is to initiate a discussion in which young people play the key role. Students from Northwest Bulgaria together with teachers, experts and artists, will “map” 4 Northwestern cities by finding and remaking signs of memories of 1989 (the recent past) in those cities and thus making 1989 “visible” for citizens and guests of those cities.
How?
-    by identifying the way young people today connect with the recent past;
-    by provoking youngsters’ interest in the 1989, so they to start asking questions about this recent past;
-    by involving young people in a constructive dialogue with their parents so to identify the emotions of 1989;
-    by investigating how recent history is thought in Bulgarian schools.

Activities: Independent teams will work in the four cities – Vidin, Montana, Vratsa and Varshets. Each team will organize investigative workshops. The results of their work will be periodically presented during the project – in May during the Goat Milk memories festival and in Sofia at the end. The open – museums created by the young people to artistically map the memories of 1989 they have found – is the culmination of the project.

Two weeks summer school will gather in Bela Rechka 12 to 15 young people from the four cities who will work together with Bulgarian and foreign theatre directors to interpret part of the most interesting stories, gathered in Vidin, Montana, Vratza and Varshetz using the language of the open air theatre. The performance will be presented during the annual fest of the city of Varshetz in August.

Contact: Mariana Assenova, +359 888 310 667, mariana@e80.eu
New Culture Foundation