Filmmaker Elenko Kassaliyski with a story about the Bulgarian base in Antarctica

published on 8/13/24 12:05 PM

Photo: Facebook /Beyond the Limit

The Bulgarian Antarctic Base was founded in 1988 and since 1993, by decree of President Zhelyu Zhelev, it has been named after St. Kliment Ohridski. Since then, Bulgarian Antarctic scientists have been conducting numerous experiments in the fields of geology, geophysics, physics, meteorology, cartography, zoobiology, botany, ecology and medicine at the base located on Livingstone Island.

Bulgaria is the only country on the Balkan Peninsula that has had a base in Antarctica for 35 years

This November, the 33rd Bulgarian polar expedition will dock on the Ice Continent, and one of its tasks is to carry out construction work on the base's new laboratory unit, which will have geological, biological and general multi-purpose rooms, as well as storage, technical and rest rooms.

The new laboratory unit at the Bulgarian Antarctic base on Livingstone Island

Realising what has been achieved in this most remote and pure place on earth, one certainly feels a certain amount of respect and reverence for these peacetime heroes of sorts and has probably asked more than once how did it come to this?

The director of the film Beyond the Limit, Elenko Kassaliyski, is part of the 31st expedition to the Ice Continent and in it he shows us how the polar base is changing and the life of the Bulgarian Antarctic people is developing there.

He says that in Antarctica his work was lonely - "you do everything yourself there - filming, sound, lighting". He then had help from "a small team of invaluable people".

Kasaliyski owes the opportunity to go to Antarctica to the chairman of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute, polar explorer Prof. Hristo Pimpirev, whom he met on a photo shoot for the BNT's ancestral memory programme.

"It turned out that all old Antarctic people have films about their ancestry. These are professors Boyan Biolchev, Nikolai Tsankov, Hristo Mikhailovsky..., Simeon Idakiev is the voice over. And when a few years after our conversation with prof. Pimpirev we decided to travel, they all responded and assisted me with whatever they could."

How does a day on the road to the Ice Continent go?

"Antarctica is the goal of the trip, which is quite long and every day, until we get there, goes the same way. A very small group of people work long hours conducting various scientific studies, but in parallel they do hard physical labour. Nature is against you, the weather being what it is. The cold is not so much a problem there as the wind and very serious moisture from the colliding Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the Drake Passage. In short, it's where you learn to give thanks for the opportunities nature gives you to work."

The film, "Beyond the Limit," will be an hour and a half long, and could be released on some television, but its quality is more for the big screen, the director says. The plot shows us that all the obstacles we think are insurmountable can be conquered if we try hard enough.

In September, "Beyond the Limit" will be screened at several major festivals, after which it will be "spun off" into theaters.

Kasalyisky also revealed details of another film he is currently working on. It is dedicated to a rock phenomenon located at the bottom of the Black Sea, between Sozopol and the island of Saint Ivan - a petrified forest from the time when the Universal Flood happened. It is believed that it happened more than 7,500 years ago. With the caveat that work on the film "The Flood and the Petrified Forest" is ongoing, the director told us:

"One of the versions we explore in the film is that when the Bosphorus broke, the Black Sea was a freshwater basin and the waters of the Mediterranean flooded a vast area of land full of plants, people and animals that fossilized over time. Now, this artifact from that time is living a new life of its own because it is inhabited by various fish, mussels, crabs, etc."