A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

This song from a popular animated movie marvelously reflects the popular idea of cinema. Most viewers believe that the lucky ones dwell behind the screen and around it. As if to show their gratitude for such adoration those lucky ones make numerous movies about men and women, old and young, our contemporaries and distant ancestors, fairy-tale characters and common inhabitants of the poorest quarters who attain success in cinema and in life.

Our program does not pretend to offer a universal recipe for success. It does not exist. The key to triumph in life may be persistence in achieving one’s goals. Like the Indian boy who swims across a wide river every day to get to the place where they can teach him mathematics (“Our Home”). Or like the destitute Italian immigrant in New York. The lot of the Latin lover is not the worst option for a young handsome man. But the protagonist of “Silent Life: The Story of the Lady in Black” knows that it is not the end of his journey but merely the beginning. It is not enough for him to have several women. He wants EVERYBODY to admire him. And it will come to pass when he moves to Los Angeles and changes not only his circle of friends but also his lengthy name Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pietro Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentino d`Antoniolla to the short Rudolph Valentino.

Or it may be that success as such is not all that important. Like in the case of the teacher from the Indian film “If Only Trees Could Talk”. Or in the case of the poor Syrian refugee who ended up in a Bulgarian prison and found an unexpected patron in the person of a local omnipotent crime boss (“I Don’t Like You”). Or look at the mysterious lady in black who for half a century every year brought a red rose to Valentino’s grave.

Success may be of different sorts. People take different paths to attain it. But every time this is a new road with a lot of happy and tragic discoveries.

Sergey Lavrenitev