Georgi Stoev (Jackie), Georgi Penkov (Johnnie) and Hristo Iliev (Charlie) are to receive the Sofia award for their lifetime contribution to cinema at Lumière cinema tonight. Oddly enough none of them has ever been to any film school, though they have dozens of documentaries and feature films to their names – 5 to 90 minutes long.

We talk to Nicola Boshnakov, continuity director of their films, author of a documentary about the trio called “Jackie, Johnnie and Charlie are not dog names”.

“Johnnie Penkov is a member of the world acoustic association with a patent of his own – bass reflex speakers that are now in wide use. At the time Johnnie invented them here, in Bulgaria. Similar speakers were being developed in the West, but it is his patent, he has 6-7 in all. The audio in Bulgarian documentaries has always been mostly his work. He has always aimed high and has always achieved his goals. Now he has gradually been retiring but with him, there is always a final cut. New software can work miracles. He is 85 now but professionally is in mint form.”

Charlie is a wizard of documentary film scripts. He can find the characters, tell their stories in a way that grips the audience and then leave the film director to take over the challenge. But he is always actively involved in the shooting. Charlie has written scripts for cartoon films which have earned awards in this country and abroad. Jackie – the trio’s film director, a biologist by education, has studied in Dresden and in Sofia and is endowed with an incredible sense of all things comic, as are the other two.

“Jackie is like that – a colourful character,” Nicola Boshnakov says. “He started out with popular science films. Then came “The adventures of Spas and Nelly” (Spas and Nelly being a dog and a cat), that all three worked on. Jackie is readily recognizable as a director and it is a great pleasure for me to be working with him, Johnnie and Charlie because they are among the last living classics of Bulgarian filmmaking.”

The trio’s latest film “Good morning, captain” is to be screened at Lumière cinema tonight. The principal character of the documentary is Genata – frontman of the band Nonstop at the maritime shipping school. In those days band leader was composer Boris Karadimchev; in the 1970s Nonstop were very popular in Bourgas and the region around. But the young men were drafted and were sent to different army units in different parts of the country. Genata spent three and a half years on a submarine, the next ten he worked on ships. Then for twenty years he was director of the port in Tsarevo. But everywhere he went he was the life and soul of the party. That is why the trio describe the film as “the first documentary musical”. But fate has ordained that Genata face a challenge. Can his easygoing character help him cope?

English version: Milena Daynova