From Hollywood to ancient Thrace: two types of artistic reception of Antiquity

The text explores the way ancient literary, historical or mythological stories and personages are being used in modernity. The research focuses on two types of artistic reception of the epoch. The first one is the representation of ancient stories in the frames of culture industry: it explores some cinematographic implementations of ancient stories explaining the differences between the literary sources and their modern interpretations. Some emblematic examples illustrate the social or political allusions which are to be recognized in the modern artistic representations of ancient stories. The second part of the text explores local Bulgarian festivals that include some ancient divine or heroic personage, e. g. Dionysos, Sabasius, Roman warriors, etc. The slightly altered focus of the research is due to the lack of significant cinematographic representations of antiquity in modern Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the importance of local festivals ?reconstructing? or merely related to ancient rituals constantly increases in the last few years. The explored cases include for instance traditional ?Roman? festivals celebrating the might of Roman army located in ancient provinces Thrace and Dacia (covering the territory of modern Bulgaria), some religious feasts connecting ?ancient? elements and personages with Christian saints and traditional folklore practices, etc. The curious amalgam of various religious rituals is interpreted in terms of the attempt to ?reconstruct?, i. e. to compose the past in order to gain local prestige and to fabricate a coherent religious, cultural and even political history of Bulgaria.