STORYTELLER AND VFX ARTIST, Steve Mihaylov

I was born in Bulgaria in 1965 and lived there roughly until the day the Berlin Wall fell (1989). I have spent the rest of my life here, in the US.

I wouldn’t lie if I say that sometimes I’m surprised by how vivid and present my memories from those years are – after all, I was just a young man when I left.

They are not something I wish I didn’t have, though, for occasionally, they create interesting dynamics in my internal world. For example, I cannot help but ascertain how quickly we, humans forget or ignore the past. Some are even eager to repeat it. 

My beloved nephew, for example, a Western-educated, bright young man, has no clue about any of the things I’m talking about here. To him, and his generation, the difference between Lenin and Martin Luther King is just a blur, at best. 

So, storytelling is my modest attempt to keep the memory alive, to pay respect to the countless casualties of totalitarian structures, and also, to remind the unconvinced that sure, democracy does not turn life into nirvana, but – there is no better system than it.