The City of the People

The Town Of  The People pictures Dimitrovgrad, a town built by thousands of young people, labor brigades  from all over Bulgaria in  the period between 1945-1947. Dimitrovgrad was planed as a model of a city, a tool for Communist propaganda and promotion of its power. Kamen Stoyanov brings up the image of an idealized city, emptied of life and human presence, reenacting the language of ‘national’ images of the Soviet Block propaganda. A kind of a city symphony (an experimental film form that presented the city as a protagonist instead of a mere decor), Dimitrobgrad, became a symbol of the collapse of a dream and an ideology. The film ends with footage showing real people in the city’s Sunday open air market which attracts people the most after the changes of 1989.