Hristo Piskov(1927-2009)

Hristo Piskov was a Bulgarian film director and screenwriter. Not a single one of his generation's director, all of whom has lost part of their youth to the war, found it possible to assert their talent and strength. Hristo Piskov was a graduate of the Moscow Cinema Institute and Lev Arnshtam's assistant in co-production, A Lesson in History (1957). Piskov's Poor Men Street (1960) and There is no Death (1962) were the pinnacle of the expressionistic and symbolic language - the so-called expressive realism - as the voice of modern Bulgarian films. The last one - picture of the worker's environment, which had until then been idealized without reservation, aroused great criticism. Piskov did not return to film until 1966, when, in collaboration with his wife, Irina Aktasheva, he made a tumid attempt at a nonconformist tale about young workers, Monday Morning. The searches of more original view towards the human being and reality of socialism meet sharp reaction and "Monday morning" had not been shown for more than 20 years. The film was finished in 1966 but had its first night in 1988. After an interruption of seven years, Piskov and Aktasheva made an autobiographical evocation of revolutionary youth in "Like a Song" (1973), bathetic in its reminder of the disillusionment that followed. "Like a Song" is a story of young love against the backdrop of historical events. Piskov and Aktasheva have made together also Sunstroke (1977), Avalanche (1982), and Only You, My Heart (1987). Piskov and Aktasheva were among the initiators of the establishing of the "Club for Support of Publicity and Reconstruction in Bulgaria" in 1988, which was one of the first opposition societies against the communist regime in Bulgaria. In 2009, they received the Prize of Union of Bulgarian Filmmakers for their Lifelong Achievement in the Bulgarian film art.