Vernissage
16th September
18.00 pm
Canetti House

Photo exhibition “14 x 14 – Survey of the Danube Region. Positions in Contemporary Art. – Individual Views.”  

Bulgaria is the fifth and final station for the travelling exhibition which started its touring across the countries of the European Danube macro-region in the spring of 2014. The exhibition features 26 large-format photographs by renowned artists from all the 14 countries of the EU Danube macro-region. They show moments and scenes from the current living environment of the artists in their home countries. Momentary close-ups, landscapes, surreal still life photos and family portraits convey an insight into the social realities of the Danube region. The exhibition will be shown in Ruse in collaboration with the donumenta e.V and thanks to the support of the City of Regensburg. Curator – Regina Hellwig-Schmid, Artistic Director of the donumenta and “14×14”.

1st October
16.00 pm
Canetti House

Elias Canetti – Notes 1942 – 1985. The Human Province/ The Secret Heart of the Clock
presented by Prof. Penka Angelova

The volume comprises of the notes of Elias Canetti, written in the period 1942-1985. His notes are often only a few lines or pages long. They are records of a strict thought process, in which the reader can follow at first hand the creation and transformation of ideas, observations and memories. The notes are a result of the author’s own, constantly continuing work process. Canetti himself says that a particular part of his life “finds its way in these notes.” The book comes out in 2015, thanks to the Elias Canetti publishing house, and will be presented for the very first time.

1st October
17.00 pm
Canetti House

Presentation of an anthology of modern Polish plays for children and adolescents “The different duckling and… others, not only fairy tales”

The anthology’s publication is an initiative of the Polish Institute in Sofia on the occasion of the Year of the Polish Theater. It includes 10 plays from different authors. The plays respond to the expectations of children and adolescents and treat with respect the intelligence and the specific sensitivity of this audience. But the plays are also approved by parents and pedagogues, receive awards in various festivals and enjoy the attention of the critics. In other words, these pieces of modern Polish art help to overcome the division between the art for children and the art for adults. The anthology is going to be presented in Ruse by the translator from Polish Vera Dejanova and actors will read chosen excerpts from it.

1st October
18.30 pm
Canetti House

Rumiana Ebert  – Corners and Ovals
Moderation  by Prof. Ana Dimova

Rumiana Ebert was born in 1945 in Plovdiv and currently resides in Basel and Berlin. She has published several collections of poetry and has also published in anthologies and magazines. She translated poems and wrote essays on Bulgarian poetry as well. She received the Mannheimer Poetry Prize (2007), as well as other awards and grants. Ebert connects science and poetry in her poetry book Corners and Ovals, which was published in 2013. The complete translation of the book will be presented in Ruse for the very first time thanks to the Elias Canetti publishing house.

Vernissage
2nd October
17.30 pm
Canetti House

Ukrainian Night – Presentation of the illustrated book and photography exhibition
Moderation: Prof. Dr. sc Penka Angelova

In 2012/13 the photographer Miron Zownir and the Ukrainian writer and translator Kateryna Mishchenko visited  Ukraine to explore the everyday life there in its margins. Zownir photographed drug addicts from Poltava, homeless people at Kiev’s main station, street children in Odessa and the inhabitants of several Roma camps. Mishchenko’s sensitive texts and Zownir’s close-up images document the profound fault lines in Ukrainian society, in which the harbingers of revolution can already be felt. In Ruse the artists will present the illustrated book as well as the photography exhibition Ukrainian Night.

The event is sponsored by the Border Crossers program of the Robert Bosch Foundation.

2nd October
19.00 pm
Canetti House

Reading with László Márton – Shady main street

László Márton was born in 1959 in Budapest. He has university degrees in German and Literature Studies as well as in Sociology. Some of the authors he translated into Hungarian are Kleist, Goethe and Grillparzer. Márton himself has published novels, plays and essays since 1984 and received several awards for his work, including the 2007 Sándor Márai Prize. His novel Shady Main Street was published in 2003 translated into Bulgarian by Stefka Hrusanova, who is also going to be our guest in Ruse The book portrays a Hungarian small town and the destruction of its peaceful Jewish and bourgeois milieu. It shows how people were persecuted, discriminated and forced to flee, as only the shadows of memory remained. They move like pale copies of the missing people along the former main street and are brought to life by Márton. The novel is one of the most emblematic books of the author. It has already been presented in Bulgaria and arose great interest, but also created controversy. Now the novel will be presented in Ruse.

3rd October
11.00 am
Canetti House

Tzveta Trifonova is a prominent Bulgarian philologist and historian. She worked at the Institute for Literature (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) from 1981 to 2009. She is an author of four treatises: “Archive – N. Vaptzarov. An Analythic Account” (1992); “Nikola Vaptzarov. The Text and the Shadow” (2004); “Writers and Dossiers” (2004); and the compilation of literature studies “Georgi Markov. Writing, so that You Could Die” (2012). She has published more than 100 papers, introductions to books and reviews. She is the compiler and the editor of books by Yana Yazova, Georgi Markov, Danail Krapchev. In the morning she will present a concised version of her essay about Zmey Goryanin, which is included in her book “Writers and Dossiers”. In the afternoon she is going to present a lecture, based on her book “Georgi Markov. Writing, so that You Could Die”.

3rd October
14.00 pm
Canetti House

Johanna Affeld was born in Magdeburg in 1987. She has a degree in Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe from the Humboldt University of Berlin. After practical trainings in Moscow and Minsk Affeld wrote her thesis about so-called ArtComics. In her work she examines the potential that arises from comic language in connection with a political and artistic context. Based on the work of the contemporary East European artists Marina Napruškina and Viktoria Lomasko, Affeld will make a presentation about ArtComics. Its specific form transcends different media, disciplines and cultures. The presentation will be in German and if necessary partly in English.

3rd October
17.00 pm
Canetti House

Lecture with Tsveta Trifonova – Georgi Markov for the loneliness of the exile and of the world

3rd October
18.00 pm
Canetti House

Natalka Snjadanko was born in 1973 in Lviv. She studied Ukrainian, Slavonic and Romance Studies in her home city and in Freiburg. She translates from English and Polish into Ukrainian. Snjadanko also works as a journalist for the Ukrainian and international media, including the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The author has published several novels in addition to short stories. Snjadanko’s texts are translated into numerous languages. Snjadanko will read from the short story Fragments of an unwritten script for a several part love story in Ruse. In this piece of art the author tells the stories of a far too unassuming woman and a much too demanding man in a very pointed and ironic way. Through the fate of both her characters Snjadanko explores the question what kind of human problems are suitable for literary work or for a film adaptation.

3rd October
19.30 pm
Canetti House

Screening of the play Zucker Bras –  director Agata Puszcz
With Bulgarian subtitles, 85 minutes

An elderly tailor master and his sister, who own the corset workshop “Zucker Bras”, decide to use sabotage methods, in order to fight the competition of the cheap Chinese bras. The Don Quixotes of young capitalism are going to fight the forces of evil, or the Supermarket, represented by the boss of the security – Madam Capo.

The story of the Zucker family tells ironically how the hand-made stuff is replaced by mass production and how the endangered species of the small craftsmen`s workshops disappear from the urban landscape.

4th October
11.00 am
Garden Canetti House

My favorite children’s book – an outdoor reading room for children and parents

The workshop gives the children and also those who are already grown the opportunity to bring one selected children book and to present it in the company of other children and their parents. For one morning, the garden of Canetti House will transform into a reading room in the open air, where big and small children could immerse in the wonderful world of fairy tales, adventures, animal stories and stories about crime and magic. You are also encouraged to bring more children’s books and exchange them with the others.

4th October
17.00 pm
Canetti House

Silvia Choleva, born in 1959 in Sofia, is a graduate in Bulgarian philology of the Sofia University „St. Kliment Ohridski”. She works as an editor for some of the cultural emissions of the Bulgarian national radio and for the „Literature Newspaper”. Choleva writes also monthly reviews for various magazines. and was the editor-in-chief of the magazine „altera”. She writes poems, essays and has published a book of stories – „Goshko”. Her novel „Green and Golden” came out in 2010. Choleva is the author of the script to the short movie of the director Svetla Tzotzorkova „My mother” (2005). In Ruse the author will present poems from her new book.

4th October
18.00 pm
Canetti House

Reading with Gerhard Jaschke  – Selected Poems from three collections of poetry
Moderation: Prof. Dr. sc Penka Angelova

Gerhard Jaschke, born in 1949 in Vienna, studied Law and since 1970 works as a freelance writer. Jaschke published in Austrian and foreign magazines and anthologies, in catalogs and on the radio. In 1975 together with Hermann Schürrer he founded the magazine for literature and art Freibord and the book series Edition Freibord. The author published among others prose and poetry and worked as a literature professor. Jaschke received several awards and grants, including The Lower Austrian Cultural Prize for Literature (2010). In Ruse the author will read selected poems.

On October 5th, Gerhard Jaschke will have a presentation also in Veliko Tarnovo at the TAM club

4th October
19.00 pm
Canetti House

Reading with Gabriele Petricek – From the heaven, Triptych
Moderation: Prof. Dr. sc Penka Angelova

Gabriele Petricek, born in Krems on the Danube, lives in Vienna. The author is an educated fashion designer and a tailor. Her work has been published in Austrian and foreign newspapers, anthologies, exhibition catalogs, literary and music magazines and has been broadcasted on the radio. Petricek received several awards and grants. The most notable of them is the 2015 Elias Canetti grant from the City of Vienna. Petricek published a collection of short stories in 2005. Another collection of short stories From the heaven, Triptych (2009) will be presented in Ruse. The author deals with the themes of guilt, failure, eroticism and death in this latter collection of short novels.

On October 5th, Gabriele Petricek will have a presentation also in Veliko Tarnovo at the TAM club.

5th October
17.30 pm
Canetti House

Reading with Roman Widder – Ibissur
Moderation: Svetlana Kirova

Roman Widder was born in 1985 in Heidelberg, Germany. He studied European Literatures in Berlin and Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Widder wrote his thesis about the Soviet communist author Andrei Platonov. He has been writing a PhD about figures of utter poverty. He works as interpreter and translator for several refugee organizations on a voluntary basis. He has published poems and short stories in various magazines and anthologies. His well-received debut novel Ibissur came out in 2013. This book is going to be presented in Ruse. It tells the story of a German in Siberia and thus the book expands the geographical limits of the Festival to Russia.

5th October
18.30 pm
Canetti House

Reading with Aleksi Damjanov – Short Stories from The Son of the high Grass
Moderation: Svetlana Kirova

“One of the biggest battles of a young person is against their own overconfidence. It may be tempting to swim in the warm seas of ego, especially when you have still seen and done little. Many of us, artists or not, choose the mask of scandalous extravagance instead of a journey on the bumpy road of hard work.

The bravest have left a glaring trace of infamy on the internet, still counting thousands of views. I also watched them and I laughed. And I saw, there and elsewhere, how it looks to claim a place on the podium if you have not earned it yet. This is why I would just like to present you with my humble literary attempts. I hope you enjoy reading them. And I hope you will smile upon the bits of naivety you may meet inside.”

5th October
19.30 pm
Canetti House

Screening of the play Valentina about Valentina Tereshkova – director Wojciech Faruga
With Bulgarian subtitles, 55 minutes

Wojciech Faruga’s play tells the story of one of the most famous and mysterious women of the XX century – Valentina Tereshkova – the weaver, who is chosen by Nikita Khrushchev to become the first woman to be sent in space. After her return to the Earth she becomes one of the brightest and most recognizable stars of the Soviet Union.

The play is based on excerpts from the original diaries of Valentina Tereshkova and quotes by Soviet cosmonauts, who are taken from the documentary of Maciej Drygas “State of weightlessness”.

6th October
17.30 pm
Canetti House

Reading with Kristin Dimitrova – Ethereal songs and secret services
Moderation: Prof. Dr. sc Penka Angelova

Kristin Dimitrova (born in 1963) is a famous Bulgarian writer and poetess. She graduated in English philology at the Sofia University ”St. Kliment Ohridski”, where she currently teaches. Dimitrova worked as an editor and a columnist for different magazines and for the radio. She has received numerous awards for literature and translation. Her stories and poems have been published in 24 countries and in 21 languages. In 2008 she received the national award „Hristo G. Danov” for her novel ”Sabazius”. The book „Ethereal Songs and Secret Services” is a research about the image of Bulgaria, the Bulgarian and the Bulgarianness, the way they have been presented on the pages of the British, American and Anglocanadian press during the last decade of socialism and the first decade of democracy (1980-2000).

6th October
18.30 pm
Canetti House

Reading with Kiril Vasilev – Provinces – Suburb of a non-existent City
Moderation: Prof. Dr. sc Penka Angelova

Kiril Vasilev, born in 1971 in Sofia, studied Cultural Studies. He worked as reporter for the newspaper Dnevnik and as honorary lecturer at the New Bulgarian University. Vasilev publishes translations and critical articles in cultural journals. His poetry has a high degree of modernism. His literary debut Three Poems (2004) was praised for its ultra-modern language and helped him to be regarded as one of the most important poets after 1989. His most recent publication is the collection of poetry Provinces from 2015. The poem, which the author will present in Ruse – Suburb of a non-existent City is from this latest collection.

6th October
19.30 pm
Canetti House

Screening of the play The suitcase – director Wawrzyniec Kostrzewski
With Bulgarian subtitles, 68 minutes

The author Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk is inspired by the story of a Frenchman, who sees his father’s suitcase at an exhibition in Paris, as the suitcase belongs to the Museum in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Frenchman – Michael Leleu, had to hide, using somebody else’s name, together with his mother in the Alpine region Savoy during the World War II. His father was arrested in 1943 and sent to the German Nazi camp Oświęcim, where he died. The son lived on and after the end of the war preserved his changed name. The main character of the play wanted to erase from his memory the war’s trauma, to live a life of his own, to forget. But the discovery of the father’s suitcase causes a grand change in his life. He recovers his previous family name and attempts to return the family relic to his possession.