Short film
Бай Ганьо
Vasil Gendov · 1922
Synopsis
Baï Ganio, Aleko Konstantinov's satirical character, launches with his cronies into an election campaign that they run in Partsala mahlesi, a poor district of Sofia. Two thirds of the film follow this campaign, and the satire targets the politics of the moment, when the bourgeois parties oppose Stamboliyski's agrarian government.
Context
The film is the fifth by its author and the tenth in Bulgarian fiction. It is produced by the Yantra-film cooperative, and Stoyan Popov, known as Tchitcho Stoyan, plays the title role. The director's memoirs tell of the print being shown in the provinces, then kept by a private individual until the nationalisation of 1948; other accounts said it was destroyed. Long thought to be a fragment, the film survives almost complete in four non-flammable prints at the national film archive, and its intertitles were reconstructed for its centenary.
Who it is for
Half an hour of silent film, to be seen with its intertitles restored and an accordion accompaniment; nothing has been located in French.
Prizes and reception
The first film adapted from Baï Ganio, long believed lost; a review the following year hailed its unexpected success throughout the country.
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