Illustration

Date: Tuesday, May 30th 2006, 7 pm
Place: Cinema
Language: in Bulgarian with German subtitles

This is the story of a man and his dream. Or, to be more exact, of his dreams, as Dr. Georgi Lulchev is an idealist with the productivity of a tireless factory of ideas, and enthusiast in the unbridled format of Don Quixote, who ironically calls himself a “hyper-active psychopath”. In addition he is a psychiatrist, neurologist, Chinese medicine specialist, hobby chef, employer and director of an institution for mentally ill men all in one. Dr. Georgi Luchev runs his clinic in an old monastery close to Sofia, where the money suffices for bread and medicine, but where there are no means for therapists or possibilities for activities, which is why the patients stay alone with their fears and psychoses. The things which the brilliant doctor has already thought of in a decade and a half, to solve the problem and make his institution profitable, partially reach into the surreal. He wanted to initiate the breeding of pheasants, construct a canning factory for snails, breed silk worms or have soy products made. Everything failed. Sometimes the authorities didn’t play along, sometimes the patients got bored of the snail hunt. But the jack of all trades Georgi Lulchev is not at the end of his rope yet. Maybe an ostrich farm will work out.

This very entertaining and grandly amusing documentary by Andrey Paounov portrays an architect of castles in the air of a world format and his allies. The inhabitants of the run-down clinic and their director, whose credo “Einstein was a genius and therefore insane” isn’t an accident, naturally find their way into ones heart.

Georgi I peperudite. Bulgaria 2004. 62 mins. Director and Screenplay: Andrey Paunov. Camera: Georgi Bogdanov and Boris Misirkov. Editing: Zoritsa Kotseva. With: Dr. Georgi Lulchev and others.



Illsutration