Painted Brides Don’t Cry

A documentary about the fairytale weddings in Bulgaria’s village of Ribnovo

In one of the mountainous areas of southwestern Bulgaria is the Muslim-Bulgarian village of Ribnovo. It seems like time has stopped here and locals stubbornly stick to their patriarchal values, customs and traditions. Here when young couples decide to marry, their wedding turns into a fairytale experience – for three days the guests are celebrating and rejoicing. A new documentary entitled Painted Brides Don’t Cry portrays one of these uniques weddings in Ribnovo, a village in the Rhodope Mountain, some 120 km from Sofia. It is produced by TV channel Tourism (TVT) and its author is Radio Bulgaria’s journalist Veneta Nikolova. The picturesque scenes from this beautiful Rhodope village, the authentic music and emotional story in the film introduce spectators into an unfamiliar and somewhat unreal, timeless, world.

Displaying the bride's trousseau is one of the attractions of the wedding ceremony

"As soon as we arrived in Ribnovo for the filming, I noticed that this village, located high in the mountains and quite isolated, is bustling with life," the film’s screenwriter Veneta Nikolova explains. The steep streets are constantly full of women with colorful headscarves, children, and men. The whole place resounds with the sound of hammers and chisels because there is constant construction work going on. Music is heard from the distance. Such activity is not typical for the increasingly rising number of deserted villages in Bulgaria. The film is an attempt to take a glipmse of the small yet colorful world of the Ribnovo residents encapsulated in time and somewhat incomprehensible for us. The wedding ceremony in Ribnovo is the best expression of the outlook and lifestyle of these people, their sense of belonging to a small community that is sooner or later doomed to "dissolve" in today's modern reality. The fate of Ribnovo residents is somehow predestined from birth and the stages in their lives are accompanied by certain rules and rituals. So it was 200-300 years ago, so it is today! It is this predictability that gives locals a sense of security and "comfort", which is lacking in us, “modern” people. Although many of them are forced to seek work abroad, they always return home. And when a girl is born in the family, they start collecting the dowry - all household belonging needed for family life. But if a boy is born - all efforts are aimed at building a new house for the future family."

The film is based on an idea of TVT editor Stoyan Radulov and is beautifully shop by cinematographer Dobrin Keresteliev. Most colorful are the scenes with the prepartion of the wedding trousseau. Everything that the parents have gathered over the years for the girl’s new family is taken outside the house of the bride. On high scaffolds along the entire street they arrange rugs, aprons, tablecloths, carpets ... The result is an amazing explosion of colors. The parents also offer on display to the entire village the future household furniture prepared for the new family – the nuptial bed, the kitchen cupboards, the microwave oven, the plasma TV ... And then a motley multitude of peoploe starts gathering in front of the maiden's house. From time to time the onlookers stop gazing at a colorful rug or a new item of furniture, exchanging lively comments. And then comes the wedding procession before the bride is taken to her home where she will become a “gelina". "This is how brides in this region are called," says Veneta:

"The mother takes the girl to her native home whose threshold she will cross for the last time as an unmarried girl. Only women gather round her. They help her put on her wedding dress which, interestingly, is not white but full of amazing colors. They put her to lie down and then a special woman from the village arrives to paint her face. For this purpose, she spreads white cream on her face and sticks colorful sequins on her cheeks, forehead and chin. Thus, the bride becomes unrecognizable. Actually, this mask hides her from the world. One explanation is that this is a way to protect her from evil eyes, because in this transitional moment between maidenhood and mature age the young woman is particularly fragile and vulnerable. As we were preparing for the filming, I and producer Georgi Krumov talked to the locals from where their customs come from and what makes them adhere so strictly to them and they answered us always in the same way - "It was and it will be!"

Painted Brides Don’t Cry is the story of a closed Muslim community which is stubbornly unwilling to change. "These people are proud to publicly declare their “otherness” and their old customs. But that does not mean that they are archaic and are some sort of "relics" completely isolated from life in the 21st century! Unlike us, they have the ability to easily switch from tradition to modernity. The residents of Ribnovo exist simulatenously in two cultures and this makes them richer than us, the people living in a globalized, uniform and standardized world", film’s author Veneta Nikolova says in conclusion.

Translated by Rossitsa Petcova

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Painted Brides Don’t Cry

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