Francis Ford Coppola Will Be Filming in Balchik

By: Svetlana Dicheva, Bulgarian National Radio

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Bulgarian moviemaniacs are fascinated – from November 10th through 15th the great film director Fransis Ford Coppola is expected to shoot sequences for his new film with a working title Youth Without Youth in the magic atmosphere of the royal palace in Balchik.

Several mysteries will mix during those shooting sequences – the elusive personality of the very director, who had retired from the cinema for the past 8 years in order to dedicate himself to the cultivation of grapevines; the no less elusive personality of the great Romanian historian of religions, culturologist and writer Mircea Eliade, after whose novel the film is being shot; and, finally, the very setting itself: "The Quiet Nestle" palace in Balchik, former summer residence of the Romanian Queen Maria, which strikes a chord with its extraordinarily romantic atmosphere. In 1026 the Italian architects Americo and Augustino created a real legend combining the unique features of the place with their poetic visions. The park near the palace is considered a masterpiece in the art of landscape gardening, and the collection of cactuses is the second largest in Europe.

Moviemaniacs hope that through the reproduction of a story written by one of the greatest authorities on religious rituals and mysteries, who until his death in 1986 held the chair of history of religions at the University of Chicago, the somewhat tired Coppola will return to the fresh vision of the world that he had at the beginning of his career. "I was extremely happy to discover exactly in Mircea Eliade themes which have excited me throughout all my life: about time, responsibility, self-awareness, and the sometimes fantastic background of reality. To me this is indeed a return to the ambitions that I had as a student of cinematography", the director of "Apocalypse Now" confesses.

Not only the Bulgarian moviemaniacs, who know all Coppola's works by heart, but also the intellectuals reading with awe every line by Eliade, find something symbolic in the forthcoming five-day filming ritual at the palace in Balchik. In past years in Bulgaria, nearly all of Eliade's works dedicated to religious revelations about the world and the existence have been published. Against the background of the general crisis on the book market, the interest in the writer and philosopher has never flagged. On the contrary – it tends to run high. The five days of filming seem to be a peculiar sign that Bulgaria is leaving behind its regionalism and isolation – great subjects, themes and great art are going to visit us, even though for a short time!

According to Romanian sources, the filming already started at the beginning of October in Romania. The leading role is entrusted to Tim Roth. Also starring are Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz and Marcel Lures. The Bulgarian media, with their strongly manifested taste for the sensational, accentuate two details – the fact that Coppola's daughter Sofia bears the name of the Bulgarian capital city, and the director's elegant gesture of accompanying his request to the Bulgarian Minister of Culture to film in Bulgaria with a bottle of wine of his own make. As a man of good manners, the director praises in his letter the qualities of the Bulgarian wines, and his words have filled the Bulgarian wine producers with pride.

The children in Balchik are counting the days until the shooting. With their inexhaustible curiosity, they will float like a trail after the filming team, and when it is all over, month after month, the event will be the only talk in a little town which comes to life in the spring with the coming of the tourists and dies in the autumn when the last tourist leaves.

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