We do believe that publishing books is above all a cultural work (and only in one of its aspects – an ordinary economic activity), and we also think that the experiment is the best way towards breakthroughs in this direction – be it an experiment with the contents or the forms of the cultural products, or an experiment with the very communication with the public.
For more than ten years now we have been experimenting in searching for new ways of presenting our books to the public, as well as of “luring” new publics. We mainly try to involve them into being active participants (and not only passive audiences), at least as far as our book launches and promotions are concerned.
One of the ways we prefer to work together with our student readers is to involve them in creating booktrailers together.
Under our experimental projects of this type many booktrailers have been created by students during the last six years.
And now we’ve been working for over a year with a new group of B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. students in the human and social sciences from Paissiy Hilendarski University of Plovdiv and St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, on the theme of creating booktrailers for books in humanities – on the transformation of a theoretical book into an entertaining microfilm, a trailer which is meant to seduce new readers to the book. And such a trailer has to be created by the very readers of the book – by them, students, which are no professionals in visual arts, cinema, editing…
A series of workshops with professionals taught them how to approach their own bold ideas of booktrailers for our books.
And in the eve of 2021, four student teams demonstrated the first results of their work in a public event – because of the pandemic’s restrictions, it happened online, and the record of it can be seen here bellow, or in our Youtube channel.
In the same time, a team of sociologists participated in the course of the communication and monitored the changes of the attitudes of both students and their trainers.
We are grateful to all participants and to the whole team that designed, managed, and directed our work. And it is not over indeed – the next three booktrailers are on their way.
Our work would have been much more difficult, not to say impossible, if we hadn’t won the trust of the National Culture Fund who believed in our project ‘Creating Booktrailers Together?’ and supported it, as well as the support of the team of the Library of the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, always open to smart ideas and promising experiments.
Actually, our experiments in this field have been going on for six years now. And they will surely continue, at a new level. In plus, 3 new booktrailers are on their way already – at least 3!
Here you can see some results of our work:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The first one is a booktrailer by Gabriela Russinova who, while working on the project, acquired a Ph.D. in Philosophy of History from St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia.
The booktrailer stakes on minimalism and is dedicated to the collection of philosophical texts of Walter Benjamin Kairos, published by us.
Here what the author herself, Gabriela, says about her trailer:
“‘The booktrailer seduces toward a game. A game between imagination and reason, between the image and the word, between meaning and significance, between the emotion/the feeiling and the abstract. An experiment of form and content that is simultaneously concealing and revealing. But in the first place, this game, this experiment invites toward a communication that explodes the continuum of freedom to one point, speaking in the spirit of ‘Kairos’.”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The next booktrailer in this series is an original work by Aleksandra Leonova, B.A. student in Sociology and Human Sciences in Paissiy Hilendarski University of Plovdiv (and her team).
The booktrailer is dedicated to the famous book by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Epistemology of the Closet .The book proposes some brilliant philosophical and literary interpretations of the psychologically and culturally sophisticated process of “coming out”, concerning someone’s sexuality.
Aleksandra – or Sasha, as everybody calls her – says this about her joint work with her team:
“In the endeavour to turn the attention of the wider audience to the problems of the LGBT society, our team created something that balances between a booktrailer and a social ad. Intrigued by the book’s content and carried ahead by our desire to make a creative video, we dived into the work process with great pleasure even if with minimal knowledge about filming, directing and producing this type of projects. With the aid of consultations and opinions from experts and project participators, this creation came to light while we obtained priceless experience in this promising field. We believe that to win the spectator’s interest one must combine the ‘motleyness’ of the creative approach with the stylistic rigour of scientific literature that should provoke thoughts on this social problem that is so hard to resolve.“
Her team include also: Kristina Kirova, montage, Kristina Markova, music (@croft_hudson, see more at Youtube)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Here is the booktrailer by Denitsa Nencheva and Desislav Georgiev, Ph.D. students in the Faculty of Philosophy and History at Paissiy Hilendarski University of Plovdiv.
It is a fine work dedicated to the first volume of the book Dream and Existence whose authors are Michel Foucault and Ludwig Binswanger, and is also largely provoked by its brilliant cover, a work of the great book artist Yana Levieva (1967-2018).
Here is what the two creators of this exquisite video say:
“Our design is inspired by two of the possible directions that the publication outlines. The first one is Binswanger’s text itself where images of birds and their flight are almost unchanging in the telling and analyzing of dreams. The second is the cover – a work by Yana Levieva that captivates the reader even before they have opened the book, capturing the eye and tickling the imagination with its colours and its meaningful silhouettes. The booktrailer’s idea is quite simple: somewhere outside the frame someone is lighting a match to throw light on the pages hiding in the dusk, and somewhere above her birds fly whose wings blow away the flame. And this goes on until the drawings, set alive by the fingers that flip through them, fly themselves toward the darkness.“
Denitsa and Desislav have also started to work on a booktrailer in the same aesthetic style but this time dedicated to the second volume of Dream and Existence authored by Ludwig Binswanger, Roland Kuhn and Henri Maldiney.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The next booktrailer in our new series is an original work of Kamen Kamenov, a B.A. student in Sociology and Human Sciences in Paissiy Hilendarski University of Plovdiv.
The booktrailer is dedicated to the book The Will to Knowledge by Michel Foucault, the first volume of the four-piece series History of Sexuality, published by us.
Kamen won us over by his insistence on not changing a thing in his booktrailer because what he is eager to show to his peers is precisely this perspective of his to this legendary book. Here is what he says:
“I thank KX publishing house for the opportunity it offered me. My goal was to produce something simple to provoke interest for the book even in people who know nothing about it.”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
We are waiting for the booktrailers of the books Excrementum: Senses of Proximity, Totem and Taboo, and Fragmentary Character of Life to be finalized!
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
And here is the record of our public event of launching the booktrailers. It took place on December 29th, 2020, and was live-streamed on Facebook:
A new public event is yet to come!