The Tied-Up Balloon: Subverting Socialist Realism at the Cost of Censorship.
"No other artform has caused the Party authorities more anger than Bulgarian cinema."
– Georgi Markov, Bulgarian dissident writer
During WWII, a mysterious barrage balloon floats over a small village in rural Bulgaria. Warned about the arrival of an enemy, the alarmed villagers initiate a chase with the balloon, ultimately aiming to take it down and use its fabric to sew new clothes for themselves.
The Tied Up Balloon (1967) was Binka Zhelyazkova’s third feature, and her first literary adaptation after having directed two partisan films with similar aesthetics and very different destinies – Life Floats Quietly By (1957) and We Were Young (1961). While the former was censored by the Communist regime, the latter brought Zhelyazkova domestic and international acclaim.
In contrast, the third film’s script was adapted from the novella of the same name by celebrated Bulgarian author Yordan Raditchkov who also authored the film’s script. Drawing from Raditchkov’s literary style, The Tied Up Balloon was Zhelyazkova’s first cinematic exploration of magic realism and the surreal.
Under Stalin’s rule (1924-1953) socialist realism was established as the compulsory artistic movement in the Soviet Union and later in the Eastern Bloc at large. Thematically, socialist realism mandated a range of tropes artists could choose from, depicting either the Party leader, the simple person (a happy, healthy and muscular worker), or the Enemy, often in a hero-enemy dynamic. And, of course, socialist realist works had to adhere to the party ideology with no exceptions.
In Bulgaria, socialist realism remained prevalent after Stalin’s death, although, as in other countries, some artists attempted to bend the style’s confines. At first glance, The Tied Up Balloon, like Zhelyazkova’s previous films, conforms to socialist realism’s thematic conventions: set in WWII, the film depicts villagers’ collective struggle against a foreign enemy. But the film’s ambiguity and lyricism cost it its future and The Tied Up Balloon was banned for “turning the Bulgarian villager into a caricature.”
There are, however, rumours that the film was banned by Bulgaria’s communist party leader Todor Zhivkov himself because of one particular scene with a donkey, purported to be a metaphor for Zhivkov himself. Further, in her book “Bulgarian Feature Cinema” Ingeborg Bratoeva-Daraktchieva claims that at that time, filmmakers would often report on their peers to sabotage their work. Bratoeva-Daraktchieva suggests that this was also the case with Zhelyazkova’s third feature, though she refuses to name the people who allegedly reported the film, saying “they are now dead and not able to object or explain themselves.”
For a brief moment, The Tied Up Balloon screened at one cinema in Sofia and was even sent abroad to Expo ‘67 in Montreal where it was immediately picked up for international distribution. However, shortly before its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the film was withdrawn (for a hefty fine) and banned by the Bulgarian regime, not to be seen by anyone for another 22 years.
The text was originally published as programme notes for the Barbican Centre.