I frequently dig through the archives of old film festivals in the hope that I will find some forgotten treasures.
Most recently, my efforts lead me to the Festival Internazionale del Film di Fantascienza (better known as the Trieste Science Fiction film festival).
What continues to amaze me as I go through their archives is how many of these films have been forgotten or slipped through the cracks, despite being honored with a place at one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world — sort of the Cannes of the futuristic set, you might say, only it was something more unusual than that: a festival started by Science Fiction writers, critics, fans and filmmakers.
You don’t get more geek cred than that.
This time around, I ended up combing through the offerings of the Fifth festival in 1967, where the BBC’s version of E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops took the top prize.
Every year the festival offered not merely a collection of current films running in competition, but a retrospective program as well.
And that’s where I spotted Putiat kam pleadite.
Buried near of the bottom of this list of older films I found the name of a film.
A name followed by its translation into Italian.
No date. No director. No information of any sort.
And no entry in Imdb.
Fortunately a friend who enjoys his anonymity found a lead, which took us in an unexpected direction, to a Bulgarian artist very few of us have ever heard of, Vasil Ivanov.
Ivanov was a masterful artist, best remember for his “Cosmic Cycle” of drawings.
They are eerie and a bit unsettling, drawings created with white chalk on black paper. They portray otherworldly vistas and strange skyscapes — or perhaps something more primal. His work reminds me more than a little of the abstract art which would end up on a lot of covers for science fiction paperbacks a few years later. It is hard to convey how beautiful these works are — and how unearthly.
However, the search also led to another remarkable Bulgarian, Dimitar Griva. A composer and music teacher, Griva spent over thirty years as the musical director of the Studio for Popular Science and Animation Films. He also served as a historical researcher for a number of major projects, directed a UNESCO film about the history of the Slavs, and composed a lot of orchestral music and film scores for features and animated shorts.
According to the article my anonymous friend found, Griva not only scored Putiat kam pleadite, but wrote the script and directed the film, based on Vasil Ivanov’s stunning drawings.
This is all the information we have, but it suggests a film which presented Ivanov’s cosmic cycle in all its spectral glory, with his drawings thrown gigantically onto the screen with the whites burning bright against the darkness while an orchestral score played.
I have no idea whether Griva tied them all into a central, astral narrative about a journey through the Pleiades, whether it was a more formal documentary, or a wordless trip through Ivanov’s paintings, or even a poem or meditation set to music with those haunting images burning in the background.
Either way, what a shame it seems to be lost.
But you never know. Maybe some day someone will dig a dusty copy out of Bulgaria’s Soviet Era archives.
It will be worth seeing if they ever do…
rivetsontheposterblog 
3 thoughts on “In search of A Road through the Pleiades…”