Grady Harp, Los Angeles films critics association: ‘Art is an endless quest for originality’ Posted 12/20/2010: El Vulgaro (AKA Yavor Batchev) has written and produced a full length animated film THE BULGARIAN PROPHET that is highly original, sure to assault the sensibilities of everyone who watches it, and proves that art is the medium through which parody and criticism and political statements can be made with security: art is art and everything in the world is up to interpretation by artists! Yavor Batchev was born in Bulgaria in 1940, educated there, and escaped communist Bulgaria in 1965 to live in France, then Canada, and now in the United States. He knows the material about which he writes and creates and that is the main reason it works so well. Yavor is no outsider to the process of ‘civilization’ from his birth to the present, and he has a keen sense of burlesque.
The story centers around 25-year-old Ivan who escapes from communist Bulgaria to Italy where he meets two friends from the Church of Eternal Profit who transport him to Los Angeles in the 1970s — that wild flowerchild period of potheads protesting the Vietnam war. To enter the country he must have a Social security number — which in Ivan’s case is stamped on a rather original portion of his body. He finds strange work in a zoo, then makes money working in a plant for reconditioning condoms, and subsequently meets a girl — Sunshine Flower — who works in a Sprout Factory. While out for a walk and a ‘relief’ one day Ivan receives a revelation from the God of S**t, is hit by a meteorite, recovers to find he has supernatural powers and become the Prophet who founds the Temple of Holy S**t. Ivan’s new stance replaces the unkept promises and lack of miracles by the existing government and he is idolized — hearing confessions, talking with the Secretary of State and the head of the FBI, blessing the faithful at his sermons, and carrying on the full schedule of government mockery until he is kidnapped by the KGB and taken to Russia where his psychic powers are used for bizarre needs. He escapes and returns to his Temple which in turn is destroyed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire Arms and Premature Ejaculations!
There are few aspects of world politics and fanatical religion and anti-social doctrines that are left untouched by Batchev’s wildly imaginative humor: Batchev (or rather ‘El Vulgaro’) calls this film ‘Cinema of the Absurd’. This well-made film is WAY over the top and is destined to become an art house classic.
Grady Harp (Los Angeles Film Critics Association)
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