site.btaGolden Age Awards Presented to 50 Bulgarian, Expatriate and Foreign Intellectuals

Culture Minister Krastyu Krastev on Friday presented the Golden Age Awards to 50 Bulgarian, expatriate and foreign intellectuals on the occasion of National Awakeners Day, which was celebrated on November 1. The honour was bestowed upon cultural figures, scientists and artists.

"Every day is an awakeners' day for the people of art, science and culture," Krastev said. He praised them for their talent, dignity, faith, inspiration and perseverance, and thanked them for their hard work in developing and preserving Bulgarian culture.

The award winners include folklorist and conductor Elena Kuteva, painters Nikolai Maistorov and Kalin Serapionov, poets Georgi Konstantinov, Ivan Strandzhev and Emil Enchev, translator Elvira Borman, opera tenor Michail Svetlev, film director Stefan Komandarev, cinematographer and screenwriter Dimko Minov, actor Ivan Nestorov, actress and director Klara Armandova, and journalist and radio host Igor Markovski. There are also museum directors and community centre workers.

One of the awards went to Ivan Shishman, a Bessarabian Bulgarian who works as a painter, mainly on church walls. He restores and decorates Orthodox churches and organizes international plein air events. Shishman boasts many Bulgarian and Ukrainian awards. Another Bessarabian Bulgarian winner of a Golden Age Award is Tanya Tanasova, a talented poetess who is well-known in Moldova and Ukraine. She also works as a journalist. She has contributed to the intellectual and cultural upsurge of Bulgarians in the historical region of Bessarabia. Tanasova has resided in Bulgaria since 1995.

Jean-Pierre Van Avermaet of Belgium is on the list as well. He is Secretary General of the European Federation for Choirs of the Union. For more than 50 years now, he has been promoting Bulgarian choral singing (mainly that of children's and youth choirs) around Europe.

Chinese printmakers Li Kang, Zhao Jiachun, Kang Jianfei and Guo Qingwen received the Golden Age Award as well. The four were honoured for their remarkable contribution to China's cooperation with Bulgaria in the field of culture and art and the development and popularization of Bulgarian culture and art, more specifically printmaking.