AUBG Bright Light Festival Puts Student Work in the Spotlight
Following two years of COVID restrictions that hindered on-ground education, the AUBG students from the Journalism and Mass Communication Department got to showcase their works at the first-ever Bright Light Festival in Sofia. The two-week-long multimedia project includes a photography exhibition and a video wall playing student documentaries. The organizers hope that the festival – hosted by the American Corner Sofia and funded by the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria – will become an annual tradition.
“I am extremely proud and happy that our students have the opportunity to have this festival,” said JMC Professor Kiril Kirkov at the festival’s opening ceremony on May 5. “It’s a student project and I just supported them and helped with anything that I could.”
AUBG student Nikoleta Stefanova was the person at the heart of the idea for the Bright Lights Festival. “Each semester we create a lot of projects and we put all of our creative energy into them, and then we show them to the professors and other students and then they vanish and that’s it,” she said. “We thought that there are some projects that deserve more recognition. As young creators, it is very important for us to be seen. It is also extremely scary to have your art out there for other people to talk about but that is precisely why we are doing it. Because it’s important. I believe that in order to grow we have to spread our light on a broader stage.”
Jeffrey Weinshenker, Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria, congratulated the students on the exhibition. “I walked in the room and I was captivated by the images I saw around and what was happening on the screen,” he said. “It’s powerful stuff, and it’s powerful in a lot of ways. We are living in a difficult moment, there's a lot of darkness. (...) We need bright light to guide us forward, to help us connect after several years of being disconnected and stuck in our homes, trying to do multimedia journalism through zoom.”
Weinshenker encouraged the students who have chosen to pursue a career in journalism and communications. “Your work matters,” he said. “Your voices matter.”