After the Fall: Bulgarian artist Boryana Rossa explores gender roles in cinema

After the Fall, a show by Bulgarian artist and performer Boryana Rossa examining gender roles in socialist and post-socialist film, opens today in Sofia.

Rossa’s multi-channel video installation will explore the performance of gender through the juxtaposition of a number of scenes from Soviet, Russian and Bulgarian films, spanning the period from the 1920s to the first decade of the 21st century, with contemporary re-enactments. Films featured include Soviet musical classic Circus (1936, dir. Grigori Aleksandrov), Věra Chytilová‘s surrealist film Daisies (1966) and the 2008 Russian musical comedy-drama Stilyagi (dir. Valery Todorovsky).

The show also aims to place the work within a broader global context, with finding commonalities, rather than highlighting cultural difference, being a key goal. To this end, the actors hail from different cultures to the films they are re-enacting. Although the Sofia edition is not the debut of After the Fall, the installations in Sofia will contain interviews with actors and directors that have never been shown before.

After the Fall opens today and will run until 3 July at Sofia’s Vivacom Art Hall.