Hello wonderful world!

 I am starting a crowd funding campaign on IndieGoGo to finish Green Dream. Thanks for your support!

I drew this comic while struggling with creating Green Dream. The comic captures my growth process while creating the film. In the beginning I had lots of hopes and dreams of creating a film that will yield success. But the truth is that I am not making a conventional documentary. It is an author film and there are not clear formulas or conventions that I can follow. It also makes it hard to explain it to others and fund it. I have accepted the fact that certain doors will be closed for me and that I have to figure out the path as I go. Interestingly, I see many parallels between what happens with me behind the camera and what is unfolding in front of it. My struggles to have an organic unconventional approach yet deliver a cohesive story mirrored people's struggle to manage urban nature and still respect and preserve its wild character. Perhaps at the end, we are all figuring it our as we go.

Vitosha is the closest mountain to Bulgaria's capital, Sofia. “With its highest peak – Cherni Vrah (2290 m.) it occupies the fourth place among the Bulgarian mountains." 

This is where I fell in love with mountains. When I was growing up we would go for day hikes and some of my first wonderful experiences with nature were formed in Vitosha. It is probably not a surprise that this was one of the places where I went to film for Green Dream. You don't even have to go very high in the mountain to see a panoramic view of Sofia.

The weather in Bulgaria had been so hot that I was insistent on getting up and filming early. We needed to get as much shots before the light got too bright. My friend Asen Irinchev, who was my inseparable partner in crime during our year in the Photography High School, had agreed to be my driver and stills photographer.

Asen didn’t really know what he was getting into when he first agreed but he stoically got up at 5:30 am to be able to get to my house at 7:30 and we hit the road to the mountain.

We headed for Vitosha, a place that we had roamed together more then 12 years ago. To our surprise this was the only day (during my month and a half stay) when it rained. I was used to the summer heat I hadn’t even though that rain could come. Add the altitude, and I was soon shivering and searching for any clothes that can help my frozen bones.