THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER'S PATENT LEATHER SHOES

The Bulgarian film classic follows the associative imaginary travels of director Rangel Vulèanov from Buckingham Palace to the distant world of his childhood. Trailing the whimsical and quirky pathway of memory, he finds himself amidst the whirlwind of a traditional Bulgarian village wedding. A ‘White Aunt’ is being married to a ‘Black Uncle.’ To the child-narrator these are diametrically opposed creatures, standing in for Beautiful and Hideous. Their juxtaposition in the child’s mind is transposed onto the symbolic memory of the nation, where sublime and deformed, refined and primitive are presented along with a kaleidoscopic picture of harvest and war, floods and hot summer days, childbirths and deaths.