Stepan Polyakov

World War One Would Not Have Begotten the Second World War, Had it Not Been for News Reels – Stepan Polyakov published his first collection The King of Short Stories when he was 22. It quickly achieved cult status around Sofia. His fellow students at Sofia University went to their exam in Literary stylistics carrying the volume – to the man. Things took on a nasty turn when the only one to fail was the author himself. It was the beginning of the 90s – crazy times in Eastern Europe. They left Stepan with the firm conviction that in art, everything is possible. He could have very well been right. Stepan Polyakov has written and produced over 50 documentaries filmed around the world. He wrote others based in Bulgaria. He is deeply convinced that World War One would not have begotten the Second World War, had it not been for news reels – such is the power of the documentary. He wrote and presented the hit radioshow Passport – traveling in style which evolved into a platform for expats and new arrivals in Sofia to meet and befriend one another. He is the author of nine books: a series of docufiction works collectively titled World Revolutions. Among them are A Tender Revolution Ltd, devoted to the student strikes and the protest-based City of Truth in 1990 (he worked at the press centre of the occupied Rectorate of Sofia University in 1990), Viva la Revolucion – 50 years of Cigars, Sugarcane and Death in Cuba about Castro and Che Guevara’s lives and work, The End of the Last God about Ethiopia during the life and rule of thelast Emperor Haile Selassie. Stepan spent months on the west coast of Africa and regurgitated his impressions in Tales from the Gulf of Giunea. He produced a series of thrillers under the collective ttile Death Flies. His play Mendelssohn Does Not Wish to Put Out Fires foretold the ruin of the Twin towers fifteen years in advance. He published the only Bulgarian-Thai phrase-book on the market. Stepan’s first and abiding love will always remain investigative reporting though. Camera, notebook and pen in hand, in a new and exotic environment. Like it was in the beginning., when everything was possible in art, according to him. He is producer, director and writer of some of the films here.