Thessaloniki right when you need it.

Whoever is interested in documentaries and film production should definitely plan on going to a Film Festival. Last weekend a group from university attended the annual Film Fest in Thessaloniki. My experience there with one word - AMAZING!!! Recently, I have been into video and film production a lot and this festival was the cherry on top of the cake. Great organization, great movies and great friends to spend the time with. From the very beginning as we arrived we knew it will be a time very well spent.

If we took dirt and garbage out of the picture, Thessaloniki looks like this amazing chill out place which young people go to to have fun and relax. The are various bars and restaurants all looking appealing and sometime it was difficult to choose as we knew we had limited time to go over all of them.

The 4 days we spent in Greece were full of surprises and great moments. We were able to go the the world premiere of several documentaries and them meet their directors, we managed to go to the cocktail of the opening night and even we managed to create a buzz around a very emotional documentary, by leaving a message to the main characters and spreading the word about it.

Some of the films we watched which will stay in my mind and I would gladly watch again if I have a second chance - Finding Vivian Maier, The Starfish Throwers and the documentary Linar. All of them with great stories, shot amazingly, leaving a very positive message in everyone's mind.

Before going to this Film Fest I never realized that this will be so beneficial to me and my future career. Meeting all the directors, distributors and producers showed us the business part to this more or less creative process.

Here are the trailers of the films I am talking about. Watch them as soon as you can and tell me what do you think:

Welcome Home

Last semester I manage to take up a course called Documentary and Film making. In this course the whole group of students managed to create one short documentary in teams of two or alone and in the second part of the semester we managed to create a feature length documentary.

The title was Welcome Home and it is about a pensioners home in Blagoevgrad and about how much the perception of Bulgarians is distorted about what people do after retirement.

In Bulgaria people are used to taking care of their grandparents and parents after a certain age. Living together looking after them entirely. In the United States, for example, many of the retired people go to pensioners homes and are taken care of. They are happy there and in fact they are better off living in such a place due to many reasons.

In Bulgaria is a little different though. Thins movie tells the story of several people who are living in this pensioners home and are satisfied with their lives, contradicting with Bulgarian tradition they plan to spend the rest of their lives in there:

Here is a link to the movie:


WELCOME HOME DOCUMENTARY from Vasil Sariev on Vimeo.

The influence

This week I decided to write about a different topic, one that is not closely related to anything that I have written or will write and it is about marijuana.

It is commonly accepted that marijuana is the least dangerous of them all and some even claim that it is harmless and not addictive. Two reasons which completely prove why it may be legal in some places. However, this is not entirely true. According to recent researchers, marijuana is extremely dangerous regarding brain cells, motivation, mentality, emotions and addiction.

It turns out that there are two major sections of the brain that are affected and different abnormalities are recorded. 40 students have been examined, 20 who used cannabis and 20 who did not. Dr. Anne Blood says "These are core, fundamental structures of the brain. They form the basis for how you assess positive and negative features about things in the environment and make decisions about them."
It appears that marijuana alters the way brain perceives pleasure and reward, presenting ordinary activities as less fulfilling. In fact, with more smoking actually the brain start developing different new connections which serves as becoming addicted, which is generally observed with people constantly refusing to stop, but claiming they are not addicted.

Mark Winstanly says "For too long cannabis has been seen as a safe drug, but as this study suggests, it can have a really serious impact on your mental health."
It was also investigated what happens with minors using the drug and it turns out that consumers below or at the age of 15 have a quadrupled chance of developing a mental disease after their teenage years.

40 people are definitely not enought to draw concrete conclusions, but it is a start.

Original article: http://bit.ly/1h0TgXB

Here is a short video on the topic:

Leave your comments below :)

12 Years a Slave

The academy award ceremony was a long-awaited event in the sphere of cinema and movies. It is the most prestigious award any one from the industry can receive. There are various nominations in which actors, directors, cinematographers and many more can compete, but one nomination which deserves special attention would be for Best Motion Picture.
The nominated movies this year were American Hustle, Captain Philips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena and The Wolf of Wall Street. All great movies and all deserve attention for being already in the nomination, but there was another movie not mentioned above which actually won the nomination for Best Motion Picture - 12 Years a Slave.

It is about the years of slavery in the United States, where a free-born African American gets abducted and then sold to slavery. The story of the movie generated huge revenue for the last couple of months almost 150 million dollars and elevated the profits.

It was controversial whether a movie about the brutality of slavery would attract audience from oversea countries, it actually became very successful in many of them. It became very popular in UK, Italy, France and also in many Asian countries. It was a controversial fact why it was promoted with posters featuring white people like Brad Pitt who had a minor role in the movie or Michael Fassbender who not as famous as the star of the movie Chiwetel Ejiofor.

In addition to Best Motion Picture it actually received another Academy Award and it was for Best Adapted Screenplay. With those two awards it definitely prove itself as one of the best movies for 2013.

Here is a trailer to the movie:

What do you think about the movie? Share in the comments below :)

And another one...

I posted recently about a team-building I attended with the RAs and this weekend I went on another one, but with AUBG Olympics. One of the few sports clubs left in AUBG.

One of the best decision I made since coming to this school is to join this club. It is not all about the sports, actually sports are just a tiny fraction of my desire to be part of it. It was mostly the people and their relation to each other. How they would be a big family having fun together and at the same time organizing one of the biggest events, entertaining people and promoting healthy life.

With all those cool people, we went to a hotel in a village nearby Blagoevgrad and spent the night playing games and having fun.

As last time, there was a team of people responsible for the games throughout the whole night. What was better, is that this time the games were actually interesting and most people had lots of fun. Everyone was enjoying himself with a drink or two - Yanev most of all as he passed out in the middle of the night.

As the team-building was going to an end I decided not to stay more and drink, but to go to bed at a more decent time and actually be able to function on the next day.

It is always a good time when you are with friends and I cannot wait for the next time we will go outside of Blago and have a blast.

The Galaxy Gear

If you think about the recent mobile products of Samsung, you can tell yourself that they actually did a very good job. Very high quality products and at reasonable and competitive price. Maybe if they change the plastic panels to aluminium will be just fine. Anyways, a huge innovation they introduces was the Galaxy Gear or the watch which you can connect to your phone.

As you can see from the picture it is another smart gadget which perfectly complements the already amazing smartphone. 

The size of it is a little larger than what most people take for a watch, but at the same time is is completely adjustable with its metal clasp. It comes with a charger, a headset and besides that it has a tiny camera and almost all features of a regular smartphone. Except the time, it can show you the weather, pictures, videos, you can listen to music and simply dial numbers without even bothering to take your phone out of the pocket. It is a huge concern how much the gadget will last in terms of battery charge as so far it can sustain functions till up to 1 day or 1 day and a half. 

Here is some more information about the product:

http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gear/gearfit_features.html

and of course a video:

The Art of Acting

A university that satisfies all its students' needs is indeed a good university. Academics might be a priority, but one develops himself in various ways and that is why there should be variety of options and challenges every students can take.

If we set aside the usual stuff - work-studies and clubs - those that, indeed, will broaden your horizon in one way or another, students can devote their time in other curious ways. For instance, different forms of art - piano, drawing, choir or theater.

I personally decided to take up Acting. Throughout the whole summer before senior year we have been discussing it with some of my best friends that the very last semester should be filled with all kinds of emotions. There you go. For the last 4 weeks we have been rehearsing a play which will be performed some time in April. It consists of three miniatures which are not connected, but have something in common - comedy.

The miniature I am part of is called "The Proposal" and it is about a middle-aged man who is in desperate need for a wife and he is asking for the hand of his neighbor's daughter, who is in desperate need for a husband. While reading the lines for the first time we did not really know what to expect and it did not sound interesting or as a comedy sounds. But, however, as we started analyzing each character, imagining them in different situations, making interactions with one another, it all started making sense and eventually we got so into it that we are now absolutely sure it will turn out as a great comedy.

More updates will come later in the semester.

Have you ever been part of a play?
Which one?
What are your favorite forms of art?

Do not forget to answer the questions in the comment section below :)