Editors’ introduction: The following essay is a unique contribution in this book. Unlike all the other pieces, which are written by scholars who were not witnesses of the events they discuss, this essay relates a first-person account written by a participant of the Bulgarian amateur film scene. Vladimir Iliev first became an active member of that scene in the city of Rousse in 1964 and was the president of the Bulgarian National Federation of Alternative Cinema from 1993 until his death in 2020. He published a book in Bulgarian on this topic: Alternative Cinema in Rousse—Chronicles, Documents, Photos 1924–2013 (Rousse: Avangard Print, 2014). We are grateful to Mr. Iliev for excerpting his book, which we have included here in English translation, with inserted section titles and minimal editing for flow and clarity. We are deeply saddened that Mr. Iliev passed away in 2020 before this book came out in print. We hope his contribution here will draw future attention to his many decades of work as both a filmmaker and film historian (Figure 4.1).

The reader will note that Mr. Iliev did not use traditional scholarly conventions, such as citations for sources, and we did not ask him to supply addtional information beyond the contents of his book, which we view as a valuable primary source.