Labelled Hostile: Vasil Gendov at the Intersection of Survival and Adaptation

This study examines for the first time the State Security dossier of film director Vasil Gendov as a key source for understanding the tension between survival and adaptation under the socialist regime in Bulgaria. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials, it traces how the figure of the “father of Bulgarian cinema” was transformed from an object of police surveillance in the pre-1944 monarchy into an officially celebrated yet simultaneously secret-listed “hostile” artist in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. By juxtaposing State Security documents with the memoirs of Vasil and Zhana Gendova and with socialist press materials, the article reveals how ideological pressure generated self-censorship, biographical revision, and the construction of politically acceptable narratives. The marginalization of Zhana Gendova and the ideological stigmatization of their son Dimitar further expose the degree to which adaptation to the regime became a deeply embedded family trauma. Conceptually, the study employs the framework of homo sacer to articulate Gendov’s paradoxical status - simultaneously incorporated into institutional memory as a symbolic originator and excluded as an autonomous creative agent. In this sense, the dossier functions not merely as a biographical record but as evidence of how a totalitarian system produces, instrumentalizes, and suppresses cultural figures in shaping the historical narrative of Bulgarian cinema. The article ultimately argues for a critical reassessment of the Gendovs’ place within contemporary film historiography