19/12/2023 - The Bulgarian filmmaker shares some insights into her fruitful interaction with Alzek Misheff, the artist at the heart of her second documentary feature

At the 27th Golden Rhyton Festival of Bulgarian Documentary and Animated Film, we sat down to speak with Maria Averina about her freshly completed documentary Flying with Fins [+see also:
interview: Maria Averina
film profile], presented in competition. After her debut feature, From Cremona to Cremona [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2016), which established a connection between Bulgaria and Italy through luthier art, Averina now immerses us in the adventurous life and career of artist Alzek Misheff, who escaped the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria illegally in 1971 by entering Italy on foot, and settled down in Milan. Internationally known for his work Swimming Across the Atlantic, performed in the swimming pool of an ocean liner in 1982, he had the chance to pursue a brilliant career in the art world along with Marina Abramovic and his compatriot Christo. However, he eventually reached the conclusion that contemporary and, more precisely, conceptual art is mostly “fake news”, hence he withdrew and returned to more classical forms.

Cineuropa: Alzek Misheff stepped back from the contemporary art scene some time ago. Why make a film about him now?
Maria Averina: A Bulgarian journalist who wrote an article about him and had seen From Cremona to Cremona approached me, as she thought I might be the right person to make a film about him because of my interest in Italy. And I felt intrigued when I learned how he re-examined his views on art after enjoying such a successful start. Despite his undoubted importance at the time, people in Bulgaria, including me, had never heard about him. So I contacted him, went to Italy to meet him in person and was immediately hooked by his charisma, which in turn persuaded me to make the film.

Do you share his overall disappointment in contemporary art?
Only to a certain extent, as I find some of his views too extreme. But I am not an expert in the field either. Some contemporary artworks do fascinate me in an inexplicable way, although I can also identify with his disappointment in the overall lack of deep meaning, the calculated repetition of the same patterns and the fact that it is mainly based on provocation. Alzek’s protest is against the legitimation of shallow art by galleries as well. His reaction is very sincere, while he is also quite self-deprecating towards his own conceptual performances from the past.

Another important film layer is his risky getaway from communist Bulgaria. The context, which shaped his destiny and life in exile, makes the viewer curious, even though the movie only reveals a few fragments.
Many Bulgarians who fled to the West during the Cold War had to cut ties with their families. In Alzek’s case, it was his mother who pushed him to run away, since she was aware that he could not pursue the kind of art he wanted in Bulgaria. They were never able to reunite, because the authorities did not let her go to Italy.

As for his adaptation to the new reality, although he communicated with many interesting people throughout his career, he admits that he never again found friends with whom to connect on such a deep level, such as with his closest friend, the poet Binyo Ivanov, whose poems play a structural role in the film. Over time, he found a way to live with this existential burden. As art curator Iara Boubnova observes in the film, every type of migration, even the most successful one, is a traumatic experience.

Somehow, Alzek has always been at odds with his surrounding environment. He never completely fitted in with Milan’s artistic and intellectual scene, because its members were left-wing. Naturally, owing to his background as a communist-regime escapee, he could not accept this Western, idealistic vision of left ideology. On the other hand, having made the radical decision to leave his totalitarian native country behind, he was able to reconcile with his past and does not speak bitterly about it. He is even capable of seeing the positive aspects of his experience. Having lived on both sides of the Iron Curtain, he was able to see the big picture.

Was Misheff’s world difficult to access? It seems as though he allowed you to get quite close.
We both took very tentative steps towards each other, although we clicked during our first encounter, as we were speaking the same language. He is a vital person who dove with great ease into this cinematic adventure, which got prolonged owing to COVID-19. When I work, I usually prefer to have more time to get to know my characters, but Flying with Fins took about two-and-a-half years, between 2019 and 2021, which was longer than planned. We wanted to do more filming in Italy, which was postponed, but we were constantly in touch online and recorded a few interviews during that period – parts of them have been used for the voice-over.